Related Interest
Gaza In My Phone
“It is difficult to find the right way in this chaotic world, but if you take Mazen Kerbaj as your moral compass you won’t get lost.”
—Bob Ostertag“Mazen’s work is an inversion of a heavily surveilled algorithm that draws the eye and always touches the heart.”
—Saul Williamsabout the bookabout
Gaza is the first genocide to be captured in real-time images on devices we hold in our hands. Two days after October 7, the Lebanese comic artist Mazen Kerbaj began drawing in reaction to what was appearing in his phone. This powerful and original book brings together that work.
Mazen draws in part to bear witness and raise awareness, but also as a coping mechanism, to remain sane amid the unfolding madness. His straight-to-the-point, high-contrast black-and-white art is accompanied by striking slogans and captions. It has been shared widely around the world, helping people express their solidarity with Palestine.
Produced from Berlin, a city where the repression of Palestinian support has been particularly fierce, Mazen’s drawings raise fundamental questions about seeing as an act of solidarity when those in power seek to suppress news of what is happening.
Haunted by the live-streamed images, we dread seeing more when we open our phones. By representing them in simple cartoons, Mazen allows us to scrutinize and reflect on the horrors we have witnessed. The result is an extraordinary sequence of images and messages that ask us to pause for a moment, to stop, look, mourn, and summon the resolve to head out and join the fight for the living, for life, for justice.
The courageous work of Mazen Kerbaj has inspired me since I first heard the “Starry Night” recording of him playing the trumpet on his balcony as the IOF was bombing Beirut in 2006. Years later, his book Beirut Won’t Cry opened my eyes to his work as an illustrator and thinker. Gaza In My Phone is a prescient work that many of us who worked to counter the western media’s blackout of Israel’s genocide in Gaza encountered in our daily barrage of flooding social media with the truth of what was happening. Mazen’s work is an inversion of a heavily surveilled algorithm that draws the eye and always touches the heart.
—Saul Williams
About The Author / Editor
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Related Interest
Related Interest
Gaza In My Phone
“It is difficult to find the right way in this chaotic world, but if you take Mazen Kerbaj as your moral compass you won’t get lost.”
—Bob Ostertag“Mazen’s work is an inversion of a heavily surveilled algorithm that draws the eye and always touches the heart.”
—Saul Williamsabout the bookabout
Gaza is the first genocide to be captured in real-time images on devices we hold in our hands. Two days after October 7, the Lebanese comic artist Mazen Kerbaj began drawing in reaction to what was appearing in his phone. This powerful and original book brings together that work.
Mazen draws in part to bear witness and raise awareness, but also as a coping mechanism, to remain sane amid the unfolding madness. His straight-to-the-point, high-contrast black-and-white art is accompanied by striking slogans and captions. It has been shared widely around the world, helping people express their solidarity with Palestine.
Produced from Berlin, a city where the repression of Palestinian support has been particularly fierce, Mazen’s drawings raise fundamental questions about seeing as an act of solidarity when those in power seek to suppress news of what is happening.
Haunted by the live-streamed images, we dread seeing more when we open our phones. By representing them in simple cartoons, Mazen allows us to scrutinize and reflect on the horrors we have witnessed. The result is an extraordinary sequence of images and messages that ask us to pause for a moment, to stop, look, mourn, and summon the resolve to head out and join the fight for the living, for life, for justice.
The courageous work of Mazen Kerbaj has inspired me since I first heard the “Starry Night” recording of him playing the trumpet on his balcony as the IOF was bombing Beirut in 2006. Years later, his book Beirut Won’t Cry opened my eyes to his work as an illustrator and thinker. Gaza In My Phone is a prescient work that many of us who worked to counter the western media’s blackout of Israel’s genocide in Gaza encountered in our daily barrage of flooding social media with the truth of what was happening. Mazen’s work is an inversion of a heavily surveilled algorithm that draws the eye and always touches the heart.
—Saul Williams
About The Author / Editor
Preview