Press

Manar Idrissi, a curator and researcher who was in residence with TEJA during the first months of this year, recently published the essay "The Systematic Annihilation of a Visual Heritage: Cultural Genocide and the Destruction of Palestinian Art in Gaza" in Arteinformado. In this text, Manar analyzes the systematic extermination of Palestinian art in Gaza as the central axis of a cultural genocide, documenting how the destruction of studios, archives, and artists spanning five generations constitutes a colonial strategy aimed at erasing the memory, identity, and future of a people. Each lost work thus becomes an irrefutable testament to resistance.

In this podcast, Tareq Khalaf opens a conversation on the agrarian ways of life and the deep-rooted significance of land in Palestinian identity. He reflects on memory, absences, legacies, collective labor, fig harvests, resistance, and radical pedagogies. The conversation also examines the insidious strategies of slow violence at the heart of the settler-colonial project, revealing occupation and its spatial regime – shaped by fragmentation, land confiscation, settlement expansion, conservation policies, and food politics – as a form of environmental erosion and disaster.

Mahmoud Alhaj, a Palestinian artist from Gaza, uses photography, video, and digital art to explore violence and exile from a personal perspective. Through the TEJA residency, he finds a safe space to create, while his grayscale aesthetic evokes the ambiguity of a reality shaped by loss and resistance.

Gazan artist Mahmoud Alhaj explores, through photomontages and film, how military occupation turns Gaza into a war laboratory. In this conversation, he talks about visual resistance tactics, displacement architecture, and the cultural resilience of a people fighting for their right to see and remember.

Concreta 24 (Fall 2024) explores Arab hospitality and Palestinian imagery as acts of resistance, addressing memory, diaspora, and fluid feminisms. Through essays and visual proposals, it engages with cultural and decolonial legacies to envision new ethical and aesthetic possibilities.

In a world where the silence of contemporary art in the face of humanitarian crises seems deafening, the founders of the TEJA Network reflect on their work of hospitality and solidarity to emphasize the ethical-political dimension of art.

Visual artist Mahmoud Alhaj presents, through 13 images created using illustrations, collages, and altered photographs, a harsh reality endured by Palestinian citizens at the hands of the Israeli state in an exhibition titled Violence 24/7.

Inga Gezalian is the first artist hosted by Teja, following the foundation of this residency network in response to the war in Ukraine.

TEJA is a network of artistic residencies created at the end of May 2022 with the aim of hosting artists experiencing vulnerability due to armed conflicts.

A total of 14 cultural institutions have created TEJA, a network of cultural spaces in support of emergency situations, launched this May. It offers artistic residencies, accommodation, support, and legal advice to artists and cultural professionals affected by various armed conflicts.

The war in Ukraine continues to mobilize the international artistic community, unlike few other armed conflicts in recent years. Now, from Spain, the launch of TEJA has been announced — a network of artistic residencies that welcomes creators in situations of vulnerability caused by armed conflicts.

TEJA offers artistic residencies, accommodation, support, and legal advice to artists and cultural professionals who find themselves in situations of vulnerability as a consequence of armed conflicts.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has created a situation of vulnerability for millions of people forced to flee their homes to save their lives. Now, thanks to the creation of TEJA, not only will it be possible to safeguard the lives of refugees, but also to protect art and culture from the destruction and cruelty of war.

TEJA was born as a gesture of solidarity, rooted in empathy for cultural professionals facing adverse conditions that hinder the development of their artistic practices.