On Sunday, 24 March 2024, 65 anonymous artists and a crowd of over 350 activists and participants unfurled a series of quilts titled From Occupation to Liberation on the iconic steps of the Met Museum, New York, to call for a ceasefire in the Israeli occupation of Gaza, Palestine, bringing attention to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions.
The group also handed out mock Met brochures to passersby that fashioned From Occupation to Liberation as an official Met Museum event. The act was a form of peaceful protest against the museum’s silence towards the Israeli occupation of Gaza. An act that hopefully will urge museum officials to create similar events that advocate for the ceasefire in Palestine, all in order to fulfill the museum’s own guiding principle to create meaningful contributions to the world’s shared cultural environment.
Quilts were deliberately chosen as a protest medium by From Occupation to Liberation as an homage to the African American community and their perseverance in the hands of oppressive forces. Historically, quilts have been the medium of choice for African Americans to tell their stories visually, even as their stories were minimized or omitted from American history altogether.
Similarly, the quilts From Occupation to Liberation visually tell the story of Palestinians and their oppression in the hands of Israeli colonizing forces. These quilts chronicled standout events earlier in the occupation, everything from the killing of poet Refaat Alareer, to the forced removal of Thomas Kilpper’s Jenin Horse, a cherished public sculpture that once stood on the West Bank to commemorate the 2002 Israeli massacre of Palestinians.
A piece titled Say The Children's Names (Dites Les Noms des Enfants) even goes as far as listing the names of martyred children who have been killed during the occupation, ensuring viewers are able to understand the length of impact that the occupation has had on the lives of ordinary Palestinians.
However, the activists and artists of From Occupation to Liberation were met with mixed reactions from the passing crowd. Regular museumgoers were divided between showing their support and even dismissing and going so far as to shout at the activists for their intrusion into their museum visit experience.
Either way, From Occupation to Liberation accomplished their goal of bringing the Met Museum’s and the public’s attention towards the occupation of Gaza, Palestine. In order to further contribute to the cause, From Occupation to Liberation also made prints of the quilts available for purchase online.
