In one of the many shelters spread across the Gaza Strip, a kind of collective whisper prevails. No music, no speeches, just the sound of brushes on canvas, and the breaths of girls seeking a measure of tranquility amidst the unceasing noise of aircraft.
Here, art is not viewed as a skill or a hobby, but as a psychological need and a temporary refuge from the weight of reality. On the yellow tables, acrylic colors are scattered, some opened in a hurry, as if the color itself is racing against the moment. Trembling hands are not chasing beauty, but searching for an outlet.
The smell of paint mixes with the smell of displacement, creating a harsh yet charged mixture with the possibility of survival. No one asks: what will you paint? Instead: what are you carrying inside?
For the third year, the Gaza Strip is burdened by a pressing humanitarian reality, leaving its profound impact on adolescent girls, where feelings of fear, loss, and deprivation have accumulated. In this context, the “Purple” initiative emerged to approach the girls’ inner humanity through art, as an alternative language that says what words fail to express.
Beyond the color, the paintings are not read only at face value; behind every hesitant line is a postponed story, and behind every dark color is a fear that hasn’t found its way into words. The girls do not start drawing because they have an idea, but because emotions are searching for a form, transforming the blankness into a space for confession, and color into a silent release.
One girl dips her brush into red, not to paint blood, but to say she still feels. Another chooses blue intensely, as if trying to calm an internal noise. There is no single reading of these works, but what they share is that they do not seek to dazzle the eye, but to lighten the heart’s burden.
Art, in this context, is not a luxury or an ornament, but a psychological necessity. This specific angle is what the “Embodiment of the Hope Painting” initiative seeks to establish; for art to be a safe space to transform suppressed feelings into visual messages, without censorship, and without fear of judgment.
Girls at a critical age, carrying anxieties beyond their years, found in color a way to stay cohesive.
An Inner Wing
At the heart of the collective painting, a wide, white wing stands out, incomplete yet powerfully present. It symbolizes not just flight, but expresses a psychological need for a temporary escape from the weight of reality.
It is surrounded by contrasting colors; red next to blue, and orange suddenly cutting across the space, a clear reflection of the turmoil within. Next to the wing, the girls wrote a quote: “If hope could see, I would gift you a wing to fly above all pain.”
The words here are not decoration, but a direct expression of an urgent psychological need; hope is a tool for survival, not an abstract idea. The image of the “phoenix” also repeats in the work, a bird or human born from ashes. The symbol was not planned, but emerged spontaneously from the collective discussion, expressing the girls’ desire to rise from pain without denying it or surrendering to it.
A Safe Space
The project’s core idea is explained as “based on creating safe psychological spaces,” adding that “Purple is a volunteer youth team from Gaza City, working to implement artistic, cultural, and awareness-raising activities targeting adolescent girls between 14 and 17 years old, aiming to empower them to express themselves through the arts and participate in activities linked to their reality.”
It is clarified that the “Embodiment of the Hope Painting” initiative came as a result of observing a real psychological need among the girls after years of war on the Gaza Strip. “We noticed that many girls carry suppressed feelings, unable to find a way to express them. From here
