To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
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The Poet Laureate of Gaza
A remarkable posthumous collection of poetry and other writings is a tragic document of genocide, and a beacon of hope for a Palestinian future, says HENRY BELL
Refaat Alareer
[Palestinian Information Center/CC]
If you can see past the relentless commodification you will be rewarded by enormously powerful work, suggests JENNY MITCHELL
CHRIS SEARLE revels in the one-off collaboration between an American polymath and a British Muslim, and detects the presence of their revolutionary forebear
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul
GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis
If I must Die
Refaat Alareer, OR books, £19.99
WHEN Refaat Alareer was murdered by an Israeli air strike on the December 6 2023, aged 44, thousands of people across Palestine and the world mourned the loss of a great writer, educator and liberated mind.
In the days that followed, millions more became aware of his work, as a poem of his began to spread. His words: “If I must die,/ you must live/ to tell my story” became an icon of Palestinian resistance and the global ceasefire movement. They travelled not just on screens and at demonstrations, but scrawled on walls around the world, pasted up in windows of homes and cafes, appearing on billboards, translated into scores of languages.
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RUTH AYLETT recommends that this mixture of memoir, diary and poetry by a young Gazan writer be read as widely as possible
HENRY BELL welcomes a fine demonstration of the need to love the words themselves in the communication of political messages
ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review The Ceremony, Eddington, The Life of Chuck, and The Thursday Murder Club
With foreign media banned from Gaza, Palestinians themselves have reversed most of zionism’s century-long propaganda gains in just two years — this is why Israel has killed 270 journalists since October 2023, explains RAMZY BAROUD