Heba Zagout (ig) was a Palestinian artist and teacher who painted Palestinian women and scenes from everyday life, including one from 2022 of holiday fireworks over a Bethlehem skyline that includes both churches and mosques. (You can see the original acrylic on the Painting For Palestine facebook page). The painting has now been reproduced as a mural on the International Wall in CNR west Belfast. She and two of her children, Adam and Mahmoud, were killed in October in an Israeli air strike on Gaza. (Middle East Eye | Guardian)
The next mural (to the right) can be seen in Broken Family.
The image above is from February 4th. Below are in-progress shots in reverse-chronological order.
This entry chronicles (in reverse order/from latest to earliest) the painting of one of Saïd Hassan’s (ig) contributions to the Painting For Palestine (Fb) project that is currently transforming the International Wall on Divis Street in west Belfast. The piece appears to be inspired by the mass grave in Khan Younis (in the Gaza Strip) in which more than 100 corpses were buried in November (Al Jazeera video | Reuters gallery).
Hassan’s instagram post of his original artwork cites a few lines from Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani (WP): “Let’s plant them as our martyrs in the womb of this soil thickened with bleeding … there is always room in the ground for another martyr.”
Here is a completed mural from the Painting For Palestine project (Fb) on the International Wall, Divis Street, Belfast, showing a man holding an injured child against a backdrop of razed buildings in Gaza. It is now 125 days since Israel began its war on Gaza in response to the Hamas attacks on October 7th and images of parents carrying their dead and injured children, and of the devastation of Gaza’s buildings, are now all too common – here is an Al Jazeera gallery from December.
Siblings Soso and Omar Ashour were brought to a Gaza hospital in the first week of the Israeli attack. Artist Raed Yousef Qatanani (ig) took them as subjects (ig photo | ig video of the pair) for a painting which has in turn been reproduced on the International Wall in west Belfast as part of the Painting For Palestine project (Fb).
“‘The day has passed for patching up the capitalist system; it must go. [… We reject the firebrand of capitalist warfare and offer you the olive leaf of brotherhood and justice to and for all.]’ – James Connolly” [in 1910’s Labour, Nationality And Religion, part 6]
Lasaır Dhearg (web) paste-up at the Grosvenor Road entrance to the Royal, to coincide with the general strike of January 18th that included dieticians, physiotherapists, radiographers, midwives, and nurses (BBC).
In January 2024, in response to the prolonged Israeli attack on Gaza, many murals on the “International Wall” on Divis Street were painted out and work began on reproductions of artworks by artists from Palestine and elsewhere in the region. The project was called Painting For Palestine and a Facebook page and GoFundMe page were launched.
According to Bill Rolston (Fb) (who can be seen in the second image, below), there was a plan last Autumn that Palestinian artists would create their own “international wall” and include murals designed by CNR artists. The Hamas attack on October 7 and the subsequent Israeli invasion on Gaza – now ongoing for 108 days – put paid to that project, and instead art by Palestinian painters is being painted in Belfast in support of Palestine. (Here is an NVTv segment on the project.)
The first (left-most) panel will reproduce a mural called ‘The Land Is Ours’ by Mohammed Alhaj, Abdullah Al Najar, Rami Al Safadi, and Abdel Hamid Fares that once stood in a Gaza school; the second, next to the first, is currently blank (see the image above).
The grid and cartoon for a mural from digital artist Saïd Hassan (web):
Another image by digital artist Saïd Hassan, showing soldiers standing over dead children:
Four murals are being painted over what were previously Lenár Linn and Hunger Strikers (1916). The originals for these were designed by Ahmad Shaweesh (ig), Raed Qatanani (ig), ? [please get in touch], and Saïd Hassan (web).
Shaweesh’s piece is a deliberately unfinished image of a group of people, perhaps a family, in distress. Qatanani’s image is a portrait of Soso and Omar Ashour as they sat in a Gaza hospital during the first week of the Israeli invasion.
The original artist of this figure with a phoenix is unknown.
The last of these four murals is by Hassan and shows a woman cooking over an open fire in front of a tent in a refugee camp.
Patrick O’Connor was born on this day in 1924 on the lower Falls but after his father emigrated he spent his early years – until age 5 – with his grandparents in East Street in the Markets. It was as a high-schooler in New York that he adopted the name Pádraıc Fıacc (“fiach dubh” is “raven”) and began writing poetry. He settled in Glengormley upon his second and final return; it is not clear that he ever saw East Street lined with British Army soldiers, as shown in the mural above. He wrote of his early life in ‘First Movement’:
Low clouds, yellow in a mist wind Sift on far-off Ards Drift hazily … I was born on such a morning Smelling of the bone yards The smoking chimneys over the slate top roofs The wayward storm birds And to the east where morning is, the sea And to the west where evening is, the sea Threatening with danger And it would always darken suddenly
Some of Fıacc’s poems are in the TroublesArchive. He was interviewed by NVTv’s Bernard Conlon (Vimeo); he also appears in a reception in Belfast City Hall (youtube).
Here is a 2014 mural in the Markets area of south Belfast celebrating the achievements of local boy George McMullen, who played youth football for St. Malachy’s and St. Matthew’s before joining Cliftonville in 2011 age 20.
On the left is the familiar Cliftonville huddle (see previously: The Red Army). The two poses in the centre and on the left are reproductions of Belfast Telegraph images. The first is from Cliftonville’s 2013 Dankse Bank Irish League-clinching win over Linfield, which the Reds won with a McMullen penalty in the dying seconds; the second in from the same moment in the 2014 campaign: Chris Curran has just scored to put the Reds two-nil up in a game against Portadown that would win them the League for the second year in succession.
Other Cliftonville players have been featured in murals: Joe The Goal in Ardyone and Rory Donnelly in the Bone.
“Free Palestine”. Tears of blood flow from a face that is shrouded by a Palestinian flag and behind barbed wire. The writing at the bottom is a quote from Malcolm X: “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the oppressor.”
Lower Stanfield St, Markets, south Belfast. Almost a decade old – this mural was launched 2014-07-29.
This painting on the shutters of the Falls Road Suicide Awareness & Support Group/Grúpa Feasachta Agus Tacaíochta Ar Fhéınbháıs (web | Fb) is the same as the mural painted in Cavendish Square by Visual Waste (see Reaching Out Is A Strength) and a companion to emic’s Lifeboat From Despair around the corner in Shiels Street.
Paddy Duffy Collection 