Palestinian artist and community organizer Dorgham Bassam Qreiqea, 28, was killed in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood of Gaza City amid the onslaught of Israeli airstrikes last Tuesday, March 18. Qreiqea, his wife Aya Qudra, and over 30 other family members died in the ruins of their home as the renewed attacks on Gaza yielded a death toll of over 400 Palestinians in one day. In addition to his art practice, Qreiqea is remembered by friends and advocates for his selflessness and for his devotion to the children of Gaza through local and international aid groups.
Born in 1997, Qreiqea was a skilled muralist, oil painter, and portrait artist who exhibited in Gaza’s since-destroyed arts spaces, including Shababeek for Contemporary Art, where he was meant to have his first solo exhibition in late 2023. He had a studio space at his family home in Shuja’iyya, which was destroyed by the Israeli military in the last year. He and his family had returned to the north during the initial weeks of the ceasefire agreement.
Qreiqea had always focused on community empowerment as an artist, working especially to improve and enrich the lives of Palestinian children. Early into the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, he collaborated with other artists in Gaza on a mask painting project and accompanying public murals to encourage proper COVID-19 precautions and social distancing in marginalized areas of the Gaza Strip. Qreiqea also worked as a coordinator for an art-aligned youth group with the Tamer Institute for Community Education, according to a post from the organization. He maintained his art and advocacy practice in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, continuing to serve Gaza’s children throughout displacement, bombings, death, injuries, and starvation.
Through collaborations with international organizations such as Hope and Play (United Kingdom), Médecins du Monde (Switzerland), the Hope Foundation (Netherlands), and Associazione di Cooperazione e Solidarietà (Italy), Qreiqea hosted art workshops, activity and game circles, pool parties. Last year, he also coordinated film screenings for children in displacement camps between Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah city through the Camps Cinema initiative.
“ There was one time that Dorgham and the other coordinators were screening a film in a designated safe zone in Rafah, and Israel started bombing the safe zone,” Cyprus-based Palestinian artist Jafra Abu Zoulouf, who helmed Qreiqea’s GoFundMe campaign and collaborated with him on a joint art project, recounted in a phone call with Hyperallergic. “He sent me pictures of them watching a movie and seeing all these bombs around him exploding.”
“ In our conversations he was saying that to be surrounded by children and hearing them laugh, excited to see a movie or eat popcorn, to get into a pool with clean water, or to paint for him, was his only goal,” Abu Zoulouf continued. “Most of their days are just sitting in a tent or outside of their tent and starving, looking for water or looking for food, so this is a way to keep them occupied and entertained and to help them forget about everything that’s happening.”
Abu Zoulouf also collaborated with Qreiqea on a research-based art project called “Deadly Aid,” born from Qreiqea’s personal observations of the opportunistic capitalization of humanitarian aid in desperate times. Abu Zoulouf and Qreiqea developed a series of informational posters that were exhibited in Cyprus and shared on the “Deadly Aid” social media account, each focusing on different aid-related incidents over the last 17 months.
“I can honestly say that this is the most tragic loss I’ve experienced, and I only knew Dorgham for a year,” Abu Zoulouf told Hyperallergic.
“We had so many plans of things that we needed to do together that I was sure that he was going to survive the genocide,” she continued. “I didn’t even think about the possibility that he might be killed.”
Abu Zoulouf added that the artist and his wife, Aya Qudra, were married on February 28 — less than a month before the airstrike killed them.
Qreiqea’s close friend Khalid Abu Khater, who was with the artist hours before he was killed, also spoke to Hyperallergic via WhatsApp messages translated by Abu Zoulouf. Qreiqea and Abu Khater only knew each other for eight months, meeting each other while displaced to the southern part of the Gaza Strip. Both working with children, the pair connected and Qreiqea shared his international resources for funding assistance.Abu Khater, who leads and fundraises for a dabke dance group for displaced and orphaned girls called the Rajeen Team, said that Qreiqea took on a father role to many of them and assisted their families with food and clothing.
“I once asked him why he gives away all his money and doesn’t take care of himself, and he told me that he lives to make people happy,” Abu Khater wrote to Hyperallergic. “Even though I am older than him, he was like a mentor to me — he truly motivated me to be better.”
Abu Khater said that he and Qreiqea were discussing initiatives for Eid on March 17, telling Hyperallergic that “it was dangerous to go and meet him, but I missed him and really wanted to talk to him — as if I knew it was our last night together.”
“Dorgham was a brother, a friend, and everything to me during this genocide,” Abu Khater continued. “Despite the suffering, the siege and distraction, he was always calling me to tell me about people that needed help.”
In his final Instagram post on February 28, Qreiqea shared photos of himself with his damaged artwork amid the rubble of his studio, reflecting on the saying, “Hope is not killed until the soul dies.”
“Art is my soul that will not die,” he concluded.
According to friends of Qreiqea, the artist is survived by his mother and sister, who made it to Egypt for medical treatment ahead of Israel’s seizure of the Rafah Crossing last May; his older brother Mohammad, who is currently hospitalized in Gaza after the airstrike; and his four-year-old niece Jenin, who was found alive in the rubble of the attack.