Dorgham Quraiqi
Artist
1997 - 2025
We all know that war destroys everything it touches. But, unless you experience it directly it’s hard to know what that really means. Now, change that word ‘war’ into genocide. Gratuitous destruction, violence, murder of children, women, men, anyone identified by hate-filled men and women as a blood enemy. And try to guess what that means.
At just 28 years-old Dorgham Quraiqi, the still budding artist was killed alongside his wife and brothers in an Israeli military airstrike after they had returned to their home in Gaza.
Just before his death, Dorgham arrived to find his studio destroyed. Paintings, including his latest and last of a young girl holding a flower, lost amongst the rubble. Imagine, not just your city, your family, friends, but also the work, the art that your soul demanded, the sustaining thing kept inside that fed you when there was no food, gave you hope against all odds. Gone. Blasted.
He made this discovery, then he was killed. Murdered.
Hope & Play work in Palestine with children. The clue is in the name. Dorgham also worked with Hope & Play, giving the child survivors of Gaza a moment of fun, during which the kids could forget living in rubble-strewn patches, constantly in motion, hungry and thirsty and under never-ending pressure from never-ending attacks. Painting pictures and faces and murals, showing films when there was a generator and fuel.
He was one of the many unbelievably brave people who try to help the children of Gaza to have the tiniest sliver of a childhood. Nearly all of them Palestinians, because it is almost impossible for anyone from the rest of the world to enter and help.
They need your help. Yep, donations, but also, proudly, Hope & Play sell useful things like calendars and clothes. Perhaps even more crucially, they need you, me, all of us, to keep talking about this, about people like Dorgham, so that Israel’s military actions don’t become normalised.
More information at
Hope and Play https://hopeandplay.org
Dorgham Quraiqi was on instagram here
