Fondazione Merz, Museo Egizio di Torino and MAH – Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de la Ville de Genève present GAZA, the future has an ancient heart. Materials and memories of the Mediterranean, a major international exhibition that, through a dialogue between archaeology and contemporary art, illustrates the historical and cultural depth of Gaza, a millennial crossroads of trade, cultures and beliefs. In so doing, the exhibition removes the territory from an exclusively topical interpretation and invites reflection on the universal value of heritage as a place of memory, identity and future.
The project brings together a selection of over eighty archaeological finds from the MAH and the Egyptian Museum – dating from the Bronze Age to the Ottoman period – and works by contemporary Palestinian and international artists Samaa Abu Allaban, Mirna Bamieh, Khalil Rabah, Vivien Sansour, Wael Shawky, Dima Srouji and Akram Zaatari.
The exhibition also features a selection of photographs of Gaza drawn from the UNRWA archive – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
The artefacts on display from Gaza are a selection from the collection of around 500 pieces temporarily held at the MAH in Geneva on behalf of the PNA, initially intended for the creation of an archaeological museum in Palestine, a project that has remained unfinished due to the conflicts that have affected the area.
The exhibition forms part of the ongoing debate on the destruction of cultural heritage, which comprises not only archaeological sites, historic monuments and other tangible representations of the past that have been lost or severely damaged, but also the people who experienced, celebrated and identified them as part of their cultural inheritance and who have since died or been forced to flee as a result of war. In this sense, Gaza represents merely the latest in a sequence of destructive events, including wars and other conflicts, that continue to cause damage across the world.
One of the objectives of the GAZA, the future has an ancient heart exhibition is to preserve the memory of a millennia-old civilisation and the communities that embodied it, while raising public awareness of the need to safeguard and transmit cultural heritage threatened by war and oblivion through a dialogue between archaeological finds and contemporary works of art.Since the Bronze Age, Gaza has served as a strategic hub in relations between Africa, Asia and the Mediterranean, a place of exchange and encounter among diverse civilisations. A crossing point for commercial, religious and cultural routes, the city has undergone extraordinary historical stratification over the centuries. It is precisely these dimensions that the selection of artefacts from Gaza seeks to illuminate.
The dialogue with the collection of the Museo Egizio di Torino – the Egyptian Museum of Turin– helps to emphasize this dense network of connections, situating Gaza within a broader geography of reciprocal relations and influences, and contributing to an understanding of the complexity of a territory that has played a central role in the history of the Mediterranean.
The protection of cultural heritage is a matter more urgent than ever and concerns humanity as a whole. Presenting the effects of war on Gaza, as elsewhere in the world, on material memory serves to heighten public awareness of the shared responsibility for its conservation. To this end, the exhibition underscores the fragility of cultural heritage in contexts of conflict, entrusting to the sensitivity of contemporary artists the essential dialogue between memory and the present, together with the possibility of new narratives. The depth of Palestinian history is therefore as priceless a treasure as its future; the exhibition addresses this complexity in a measured yet uncompromising manner.
The project offers a comprehensive calendar of events, from meetings and workshops to performances and presentations, held in historic spaces and distinguished institutions in Turin, affirming a profound and supportive bond expressed through an attentive and engaged cultural, international and civic network.
Group of 30 Byzantine oil lamps. 501–600; civilization: Byzantine Empire. Place of discovery: Gaza, Jabaliya
Terracotta
Property of the Palestinian Authority, on temporary deposit at the MAH – Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de la Ville de Genève. Photo: Bettina Jacot-Descombes
Oil lamp. Roman period, 1st century BC – 1st century AD; civilization: Ancient Rome
Place of discovery: Gaza, Blakhiyah
Terracotta
Property of the Palestinian Authority, on temporary deposit at the MAH – Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de la Ville de Genève. Photo: Bettina Jacot-Descombes
Decorative plaque: palm tree; Byzantine period, 6th century; civilization: Byzantine Empire
Former chronological attribution: Mamluk period
Place of discovery: Gaza City, Daraj district, 1997
Limestone
Property of the Palestinian Authority, on temporary deposit at the MAH – Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de la Ville de Genève. Photo: Flora Bevilacqua
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