Gaza Biennale
T’karonto Pavilion: Witnessing Sumud
Presented at A Space Gallery and Gallery TPW
November 13th to December 13th, 2025
Founded in spring 2024, the Gaza Biennale has emerged as a collective global art program with pavilion exhibitions being presented around the globe. T’karonto Pavilion: Witnessing Sumud, showcases the powerful work of Palestinian artists, created amidst unimaginable conditions in Gaza. Through devastation and the relentless siege of Gaza, artists continue to create—transforming grief into expression, pain into poetry, and destruction into determination. The T’karonto Pavilion: Witnessing Sumud emphasizes the importance of global solidarity in witnessing and affirming the unwavering perseverance (sumud) of the Palestinian people. This pavilion situates the struggle for survival, dignity, and freedom within a shared global context and the role of witnessing as an initial point of action. It emphasizes that solidarity is not only an act of empathy but of responsibility—an acknowledgment that the struggle for justice in Palestine is intertwined with the broader struggle for liberation everywhere.
A Space Gallery artists include: Alaa Abu Saif, Alaà Al Shawa, Liza Madi, Mosaab Abusal, Motaz Naim
Gallery TPW artists include: Imad Badwan, Jehad Jarbou, Ibrahim Al Sultan, Ashraf Sahwiel, Yahya Al-Shouli
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Gaza Biennale T'karonto is produced with the support of the City of Toronto through Toronto Arts Council.
Photographs by Ibrahim Al Sultan
Public Programming
Gaza Biennale T’karonto | Opening Reception
Thursday, November 13th, 2025
Gallery TPW
6PM-9PM
Join us next Thursday, November 13th, 2025 at Gallery TPW to celebrate the opening of the Gaza Biennale T'karonto Pavillion: Witnessing Sumud.
Catering provided by louf Restaurant
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Artist Talk with Dr. Mohammed Musallem
Facilitated by Gita Hashemi
Sunday, November 23rd, 2025
louf Toronto | 501 Davenport Road
1:30PM-3:30PM
Art. Sumud. Gaza.
Before coming to T’karonto with his family, Gaza-born artist Mohammed Musallam taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Al-Aqsa University. Join us for this brunch-time conversation about Musallam’s own practice in Gaza and beyond, see some of his work on exhibit at Louf, and learn about the vibrant art scene that produced and sustained the participating artists of the Gaza Biennale T'karonto, on view at Gallery TPW and A Space Gallery from Nov.13th - Dec.13th, 2025.
Please note that this event is ticketed ($50). Register below:
louf by Chef Fadi Kattan and Nicole Mankinen
Combining local, Indigenous, and Palestinian ingredients with centuries-old techniques, louf is first and foremost about bringing people together to share exceptional food. The restaurant serves as a celebration of this illustrious yet under-represented cuisine and is a place to gather with events that enrich and support the Toronto arts and culture scene.
Mohammad Musallam (www.mohammedmusallam.com), born in Gaza in 1974, Mohammad Musallam holds a Ph.D. in Art Philosophy and taught drawing, painting, and the history of Palestinian art for 11 years at the only Faculty of Fine Arts in Gaza. A researcher in Palestinian visual arts, his works have been exhibited in solo and group shows in Palestine and internationally. Now based in Toronto, Canada, Musallam is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice includes abstract painting, performance, and installation. His work engages audiences through materials and technologies that explore freedom, peace, and human movement. Using elements drawn from his surroundings, he expresses complex ideas with simplicity and powerful emotional energy.
Gita Hashemi (gitaha.net) is an Iranian refugee, a transdisciplinary artist, activist, curator, and writer who works from T’karonto, the “Dish With One Spoon Territory,” the lands of the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, and the Mississaugas of Credit. She lives near Wonscotonach River. Her home in Shiraz was near Khoshk River. She works in visual, media and performance art, digital and net art, and language-based art including live embodied writing, as well as in curation and publishing. She has curated many generative and multi-platform projects including Negotiations: From a Piece of Land to a Land of Peace and exhibition Will (2003, with Negotiations Working Group), the first multidisciplinary art events post Camp David and Roadmap that brought together Palestinian and Indigenous artists, filmmakers, poets, and performers for 10 days exploring shared issues and strategies for countering settler colonialism and celebrating Palestinian Intifadas.
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Tatreez Sewing Workshop with Tara Hakim
Thursday, December 4th, 2025
Gallery TPW
6PM-9:30PM
Artist Tara Hakim is currently working on a large-scale collaborative textile rooted in Palestinian Tatreez embroidery, born from a return to fabric and handwork during a time of deep grief. Centered on the Bougainvillea plant—المجنونة (Al Majnooneh)—as a symbol of grounding and resilience, the piece began in Toronto, travelled to Jordan and Calgary, and now returns home once more.
We invite you to come and leave your mark on this living fabric of grief, love, and community.
While each of us will embroider our own section, we’ll be working on the same fabric, feeling one another’s movements, the subtle tugs and pulls that connect us. Through the repeated motion of stitching, alone and alongside each other, through shared stories, knowledge, and quiet coexistence, might we find ways to hold our grief, both individual and shared? Might we embroider something that remembers, resists, and heals?
No experience is needed. All materials will be provided, and everyone is welcome to drop in or stay as long as you like.
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Gaza Biennale T'karonto | Closing Event and Book Launch
in partnership with Between the Lines
Thursday, December 11th, 2025
A Space Gallery
7PM-9PM
Join us at A Space Gallery for the closing of the Gaza Biennale T’karonto, along with a book launch for author Nada Elia’s new publication, Palestine and Feminist Liberation.