Material for an Exhibition. Stories, Memories, and Struggles from Palestine and the Mediterranean

Curated by Sara Alberani and promoted by the Municiaplity of Brescia and Fondazione Brescia Musei, the exhibition brings together works by artists from conflict zones — in particular from the Middle Eastern region currently marked by division and fragmentation, from Gaza to the West Bank and Lebanon — who have experienced the daily reality of war and exile firsthand.
The exhibition features the artistic and cultural voices of internationally recognised Palestinian artists Mohammed Al-Hawajri, Dina Mattar, and Emily Jacir (Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2007), along with Lebanese artist Haig Aivazian.

The title, Material for an Exhibition, pays homage to Material for a Film by Emily Jacir, and refers both to the plurality of languages present in the exhibition — installations, video, photography, painting, drawing — and to the challenging material conditions in which many of these artists work.
Their practices are often marked by the loss of artworks, archives, sites of memory, and the stories of those who are no longer here to pass them on.

The exhibition proposes a vision that moves beyond the victim/perpetrator dichotomy that so often frames public discourse surrounding the Palestinian cause and, more broadly, the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean context. It aims instead to underscore the role of art as a means to defend and strengthen ties of solidarity across the Mediterranean, opening spaces for learning and dialogue in which alternative futures to war and conflict can be imagined.

The works on view come from major international loans, including from New York, the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens, and the Sharjah Art Foundation. They include pieces created during artist residencies and works that exist only as digital traces, the originals having been destroyed.

The exhibition opens with paintings and drawings by Palestinian artists Mohammed Al-Hawajri (1976) and Dina Mattar (1985), co-founders of the Eltiqa Group for Contemporary Art, one of the first contemporary art galleries in the Gaza Strip. Since 2000, the gallery has played a vital role in supporting local and emerging artists through workshops and exhibitions. In December 2023, the building that housed Eltiqa was bombed. However, its legacy continues in exile: thanks to the efforts of the collective and of Al-Hawajri and Mattar themselves, a number of works were rescued from the exhibition spaces and storage rooms and are now preserved between Sharjah and Dubai.

The museum space welcomes these works, which reveal another face of Gaza — not only one of destruction, but one of daily life, transmission of culture, places of memory, and thus a refusal to disappear, a will to resist.

Envisioning Eltiqa taking on new life in the spaces of the Santa Giulia Museum, Fondazione Brescia Musei offered Mohammed Al-Hawajri and Dina Mattar the opportunity to spend a period of residence in Brescia to produce new works.

The exhibition continues with Lebanese artist Haig Aivazian (1980), whose research, based on a multimedia practice, ranges from moving images to sculpture, installation, drawing and performance. His works investigate power structures in contemporary society, particularly in the relations between the Middle East and the West and informed by control, surveillance, oppression, and repression practices.

The exhibition concludes with the creations of international artist Emily Jacir (1970), one of the most relevant voices in contemporary Palestinian art and winner of the Golden Lion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007.
Her practice incorporates a wide range of media – film, video, photography, sculpture, installation, and performance – to investigate personal and collective movements in space and time; the artist is particularly interested in the way historical memory inscribes in time or in different geographical areas.

Among her key installations on view is Material for a Film (2005–ongoing): a work composed of a thousand blank books, which the artist shot with a gun, reproducing the gunshot with which Mossad killed the Palestinian poet Wael Zuaiter in Rome in 1972, perforating the copy of One Thousand and One Nights Zuaiter was carrying in his pocket and which he intended to translate into Italian. Emily Jacir thus transforms each volume into a symbol of interrupted life and violated memory.

Material for an Exhibition is the most anticipated event of the eighth edition of the Brescia Peace Festival (Brescia, 7–23 November 2025), in which Fondazione Brescia Musei traditionally plays an active role by organising an exhibition that amplifies the voices and stories of international artists whose works highlight the role of culture as a fundamental instrument in any process aimed at building and affirming justice and peace, and as a testimony to resilience and survival.

Over the years, under the curatorship of Elettra Stamboulis, the programme has featured solo exhibitions by Zehra Doğan (We Will Also Have Better Days. Works from Turkish Prisons, 2019), Badiucao (China Is Not Near. Works by a Dissident Artist, 2021), Victoria Lomasko (Victoria Lomasko. The Last Soviet Artist, 2022), and Khalid Albaih (Season of Migration to the North, 2024), as well as the collective exhibition Until We Are Free (2023), featuring works by Iranian artists Sonia Balassanian, Farideh Lashai, Shirin Neshat, Soudeh Davoud, and Zoya Shokoohi, curated by Ilaria Bernardi.

Cinema + Exhibition, your double experience with a special discount!
Holders of a Cinema Nuovo Eden ticket can visit the temporary exhibitions at the Museum of Santa Giulia at the reduced rate.

Holders of a ticket for the Museum of Santa Giulia’s temporary exhibitions can attend a screening at the Cinema Nuovo Eden at the reduced rate.

Staying in Brescia is worthwhile!

Winter opening hours (1 October – 31 May):

• Monday (except public holidays): Closed
• Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday: 10:00 – 18:00
• Last admission:  17.15