Following a five-day exhibition of remembrance commissioned by the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, the organisers spoke out against the horrors of the Hamas attacks—and the indifferent response, or worse, of other artists.
Staged at London’s Jewish cultural hub, JW3, it featured works by three Jewish artists: Maya Amrami, Benzi Brofman, and Mina Kupfermann, who also co-curated. The trio tried to think through the meaning of the Hamas campaign of murder and hostage-taking, in contrast to many of their peers on the British art scene. As co-curator Manick Govinda recalls,
Within weeks, publicly funded UK arts organisations issued statements in support of Palestine—while remaining silent on Hamas’s murderous pogrom. Some must be held accountable: Artsadmin, Wysing Arts Centre, ICA, Primary, The Mosaic Rooms and Shubbak. Thousands of artists signed an open letter published by Artforum supporting ‘Palestinian liberation.’
For all three WITNESS artists there’s a strong sense that this is personal. After October 7th, Mina obtained the consent of friends and families to honour those massacred at the Nova music festival, resulting in her painting ‘Nova’ (2024), paying tribute to eight of the victims. Among the 59 remaining hostages is Ilan Weiss, a relative of Kupfermann—herself the daughter of a Holocaust refugee.
Israeli street artist Brofman narrowly escaped the October 7th massacre, having been painting live in Re’im the day before, while London-based multidisciplinary artist Amrami, received a flood of hate messages depicting her as an inhuman ‘golem’—which she then used as the raw material for her combative self-portraits opposing antisemitism.
