We Will Be Free
November 2023
I have created a screenprint, titled We Will Be Free to raise money for a family from Gaza that have recently arrived in the UK. The print is A4 size, screenprinted (analog, not digital) on cartridge paper.
Shareefa Energy, Ewa Jasiewicz and Sarah Al-Sarraj, are raising money to support a Palestinian family from Gaza that has arrived in Leicester this week via Warsaw, Poland. They only just managed to get out of Gaza.
Your financial support will go towards:
I am giving away screenprints in exchange for a donation to the gofundme:
Support for Gaza Family in Leicester
Shareefa Energy, Ewa Jasiewicz and Sarah Al-Sarraj, are raising money to support a Palestinian family from Gaza that has arrived in Leicester this week via Warsaw, Poland. They only just managed to get out of Gaza.
Your financial support will go towards:
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Therapy and holistic support for the children and mum, paying for Arabic speaking practitioners.
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Medical care and respite for the mother and family.
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Buying essentials.
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Legal advice and support as they are trying to settle in the UK.
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Activities for the children.
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Living expenses (food, clothing, housing, transport) for the family while the mother is looking for work. We want to support her to return to work with enough time to process her trauma and emotionally support her children.
I am giving away screenprints in exchange for a donation to the gofundme:
Support for Gaza Family in Leicester
About the Print
The print is based on a sign I made for a protest. A lot of people liked the sign so I decided to make it into a print. The sign was based on The Land by Jihad Mansour. Here is some background on the original poster from 1986:
“The PFLP circulated several, likely dozens, of posters featuring combatant women. At least three include armed mothers. In 1986, it published an evocative image illustrated by Swiss artist Marc Rudin (a.k.a. Jihad Mansour) (see Figure 1). The poster depicts a mother wearing a keffiyeh, a scarf symbolizing Palestinian resistance that is popular in nationalist imagery and among Palestinian protestors and militants. She is clearly defensive, hiding her baby next to her face under the keffiyeh and pointing a rifle towards danger just off to the viewer’s left. Her baby holds out its hand, making a ‘stop’ gesture towards the unseen enemy. The placement of their hands (her cradling the baby to hide it and the baby’s visceral attempt at defense) and the use of the keffiyeh as cover emphasize the extent of their vulnerability. This image also makes unambiguous connections between, on the one hand, the mother and her child and, on the other, Palestine’s security. First, by using the keffiyeh in this way, the two figures are literally enveloped in Palestinian national survival. Second, they are set against a dark green background. Mansour, the artist, notes that he intentionally chose to color the background green in his art to symbolize Palestine’s ‘fertility’ (quoted in CUCPS, n.d.). Dark green is also a key part of the Palestinian flag, modeled on the flag from the 1916 Arab Revolt. Third, the poster reads ‘The Land’ in English and Arabic. This text explicitly links the armed mother to Palestine, suggesting that she is both representative of and protecting the nation. The image buoys mythologies of motherhood: she is transgressively armed because she is the land under siege.8 Peteet (1991: 152) makes this point eloquently: [Palestinian] women toting weapons of war signified the extent to which even the most protected members of society embodied the suffering of the community, how this suffering and resistance to it had transformed even the most conservative aspects of society, and the extent to which the community supported the resistance. “
Source: Loken, M. (2020) ‘“both needed and threatened”: Armed mothers in Militant Visuals’, Security Dialogue, 52(1), pp. 21–44. doi:10.1177/0967010620903237.
How to Get a Print
Step 1
Donate at least £30 to the Shareefa Energy’s gofundme:
Support for Gaza Family in Leicester
I understand that a screenprint of this size would normally be sold for around £15. I am making these prints in the evenings after my dayjob and trying to maximise the print’s ability to support this family given my limited capacity.
Step 2
Send me £2 on my Ko-fi to cover shipping:
https://ko-fi.com/nnull
I only ask for you to cover the shipping as I can imagine things piling up as I give away more prints. All materials were paid out of pocket and I want to manage how much money and time I donate to this. I am using Kofi to avoid administrative fees incurred by setting up an online shop.
Step 3
Send me proof of the donation and shipping address to:
toby@chromatic-agency.com
