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- Country of residence: Palestine
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Inside an old studio, of which only a few paintings remain, hung randomly on the dark-coloured wall, Doaa Qishta (28 years old) is busy sculpting figures that, at first glance, seem to embody the meanings of joy and childhood.
These models took the shapes of various types of ice cream. Some were in the form of colored balls and placed on top of another model bearing the shape of a cone-shaped biscuit. Others were placed between two biscuits. The rest were either on cups or fastened with wooden sticks.
All of this seems cheerful for a moment, but the person examining these sculptures experiences a state of “shock” after he realizes the extent of the cruelty that these sculptures embody.
The young woman, Qishta, engraves on these models the details of the faces of the children who were martyred during a massacre committed by the Israeli army in August 2014, in the city of Rafah. They found only “ice cream” refrigerators to hold them after their martyrdom, instead of refrigerators for the dead.
The scene, with its extreme cruelty, is revived by Qeshta to remind the world that “Israel, which killed these children, is still continuing the same pattern of brutality.”
At the beginning of August 2014, the city of Rafah witnessed an Israeli massacre that resulted in the death and injury of hundreds.
At that time, Muhammad Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital (the largest and most important hospital in the city of Rafah) was subjected to an Israeli bombing, which prompted citizens to place the child martyrs inside refrigerators in order to preserve their bodies until conditions allowed for their burial.
Al Awda Ice Cream
The idea of the young woman, “Qeshta,” was born to sculpt models of martyred children inside the refrigerators of the dead, with the fourth anniversary of the last war on the Gaza Strip.
She told Anadolu: “The idea had come to me since the beginning of last August 8, on the anniversary of the war. I started producing the project after receiving a grant from the Al-Qattan Foundation, which helped me translate the idea into reality through contemporary sculpture.”
She continues, saying: "The scene itself is cruel; how the residents of the city of Rafah were forced to place the child martyrs inside refrigerators for refreshments due to the shortage of refrigerators for the dead there."
Feelings of sadness and shock gripped Palestinians when they saw pictures of these children inside refreshment refrigerators. How could a child who was buying “ice cream” from the refrigerator be inside it today, she said.
That scene, according to the young woman, Qishta, expresses contradictory feelings of “pleasure” because “ice cream” is a favorite dessert for children, and “disgust” because they became part of the harsh scene when they became like the soft drinks inside those refrigerators.
Qishta tries to create a juxtaposition between images of children and ice cream in one sculpture in the context of expressing contradictory feelings.
Sculpting stages
The figures that Qeshta sculpts go through three stages, the first of which is sculpting on pneumatic (artificial) clay, which she resorts to due to the lack of natural clay in the Gaza Strip and the prevention of its entry.
She transfers the children's details from the real photos she saved on her mobile phone onto that clay with great accuracy.
Then she makes a mold of silicone rubber, which she found - by chance - from a colleague. The Israeli authorities prevent her from entering the Gaza Strip for security reasons, she said.
Finally, the young woman fills the liquid “wax” material inside the silicone mold, to capture all the details that she sculpted on the clay.
“Qeshta” chose wax as the final product for the sculptures because it resembles “children” in weakness and fragility, while wax needs to be handled with extreme care and care, just like children.
The young woman preferred to choose bright colors when making and sculpting “ice cream,” saying that “these colors indicate childhood and fun, and they also indicate the flavor of the refreshments before the martyred children were placed in the refrigerators.”
Qeshta considers this to be "a camouflage for this harsh scene, to relieve people of this cruelty, shock, and sadness that they feel by watching the sculptures." “Qeshta” conveys that everyone who saw these sculptures at first glance felt “shock and cruelty.”
It intends to organize an art exhibition that includes these sculptures, along with other arts such as paintings and contemporary “digital” sculptures, in order to embody the suffering of the residents of the Gaza Strip from the occupation.
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