In the early hours of 18 March, in Gaza City’s Shuja’iya neighbourhood, Dorgham Quraiqi’s life came to a sudden and tragic end. After a fragile two-month ceasefire, a barrage of deadly Israeli airstrikes killed Quraiqi, his wife, and his brothers.. He was just twenty-eight years old — a newlywed, an artist, and a tireless advocate for Gaza’s displaced children. Freemuse expresses its deep shock and sadness over Quraiqi’s death.
For Quraiqi, art was more than an escape; it was resistance, renewal, and the language of survival — a language he wanted to pass on to countless children. Through his work with the Netherlands-based Hope Foundation, he transformed bleak corners of Gaza into pockets of joy, offering displaced children a brief respite from the trauma of war. He set up pop-up cinemas under the open sky, converted crumbling courtyards into swimming pools, and brought theatre to life with puppets and paint. His enthusiasm never wavered. Even as the world crumbled around him, Quraiqi remained committed to his purpose: giving Gaza’s children fleeting moments of relief through art and culture.
As a self-taught visual artist, Quraiqi participated in numerous group exhibitions and worked with Hope, serving as one of the artists dedicated to bringing creativity to chaos. In Hope’s words: “Despite losing his home and facing countless challenges, Dorgham continued to bring smiles to thousands of displaced children (…) His energy and creativity were boundless. We have lost a wonderful and talented colleague.”
Quraiqi’s final Instagram post, was both raw and predictive. It captured the pain of a young artist whose dreams had been buried under rubble: “After 15 months of displacement, I returned to Gaza to find myself confronted with an unimaginable and extremely difficult reality. My house and office had been completely destroyed by the Israeli army, and all the artworks I had been preparing for my first exhibition, ‘Until a Chair Grows Wings,’ had disappeared under the rubble. These works were more than just paintings; they were a part of my soul, fragments of dreams I had long wished to share with others. What happened was not merely the destruction of objects; it was an attempt to erase memory, culture, and humanity. But as they say: ‘Hope does not die unless the soul dies,’ and art is my soul that will never perish.”
Quraiqi was young, hopeful, and fiercely creative, known especially for his oil-based paintings, which were widely exhibited in Gaza, as his social media posts reveal. He proudly declared that ‘art is my soul that will never perish.’ In the aftermath of his death, those words resonate more deeply. His loss is profound, not only to his family and friends but to a community that found solace, laughter, and creativity in his works.
Dorgham Quraiqi is not alone in this tragic legacy. Since 2023, other artists have also lost their lives in Gaza: in October of that year, Heba Zagout and Muhammed Sami Qariqa were killed in airstrikes. In 2024, painter Fathi Ghaben died after Gaza’s healthcare system, crippled by repeated airstrikes, failed to provide the care he needed.
One day, perhaps, their story will stand as a reminder of what it means to create under siege — and what it truly means to be an artist in a war zone.
