Ghanem Al-Din’s (1970, Palestine) postcards and carrots are extracted from his total installation The Rocket and the Carrot, in which he explores the relationship between political rhetoric and the lived reality of dignity under occupation. In Palestine—the last occupied country in the world—the classic “carrot and stick” policy, which uses a combination of rewards (the carrot) and punishments (the stick) to influence behavior, has violently evolved. The stick has become a rocket: far more destructive and deadly, symbolizing military force and colonial domination. The carrot, once a simple reward, now represents deceptive incentives—aid, privileges, or false promises of statehood used to encourage submission. Al-Din’s work acts as protest, exposing systems of control and asserting that silence in the face of injustice is complicity. Visitors are invited to take a postcard—designed as an aid voucher worth the price of a carrot—along with a real carrot as a reflection on value, resistance, and the politics of aid.

Jehad Jarbou’s (1999, Palestine) photographic series After addresses themes of loss by connecting past and present events. In her works, she focuses on the relationship between people and their environment depicted through sadness, joy, happiness, and loss in the everyday settings of her own life. Being deprived of something that belongs to you—home, land, and family—forms a tree that, to Jarbou, holds a Palestinian identity. Her work seeks to explore the extent of our understanding of these concepts and transcend the imposed boundaries upon her and her people. In an effort to reveal the depth of this people’s connection to the past in the present, she asks the question “What comes after?” With the series, the artist looks to an imagined “after” of her history and its experiences: Has a home become a mere dream for Palestinians amid ongoing displacement since the beginning of the Israeli occupation? The exhibition presents a selection from the photographic series, arranged in groups that will change each month of the exhibition period—inviting the audience to return and experience her unfolding story, echoing the artist’s own question: What comes after?

Embrace by Yasmeen Al Daya (2001, Palestine) is a sculpture of a human figure tightly holding itself, seeking comfort. It evokes the pain of loss, perhaps that of a child grieving a mother, or a wife mourning her husband. Created during displacement, the original piece was made in Gaza using clay and sculpted with a metal spoon—materials dictated by circumstance. The version exhibited in the exhibition is a replica, created by artist Sidsel Ana Welden Gajardo in close collaboration with Al Daya, who proposed that a local artist recreate the work. Accompanying the sculpture is Embrace, a video of Al Daya restoring the original piece in Gaza. In this context, the replica becomes a possibility—a presence shaped by absence—while the artist’s own creative process remains visible and vital through the video work.

The work of Aya Jouha (1991, Palestine) searches for meaning in Palestinian suffering—imprisonment, torture, martyrdom—through the lens of the fragmented body. The artist examines how individual pain reflects collective struggle, and what it means to claim ownership of a body under inhumane conditions. For the Gaza Biennale, Jouha presents the work A Human, Not a Number in situ, within her fragmented, partly destroyed home and studio in North Gaza—her home serving as both subject and setting for her work. The three-channel video projection in the exhibition represents her atelier and practice, its setup aptly shaped by both the limitations of our space and the fact that her paintings cannot be physically brought to Copenhagen due to the blockade. In this ex situ presentation, we attempt to bridge the fragmented realities surrounding the work, acknowledging its physical dislocation and the layered context of its display.