In the crosshairs of memory. Portraits of journalists killed in Palestine. Exhibition opening

Since the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 and Israel's subsequent ruthless revenge, Gianluca Costantini has started to portray the journalists killed in the Gaza Strip. Working actively with the CPJ - Committee to Protect Journalists in New York, he built a visual memorial day by day. The project by Gianluca Costantini, an artist and political activist internationally known for his relentless efforts to give a face and an iconic presence to the victims of abuse, does not set out to restore what has been taken away, which is impossible. Instead, it is a votive offering, a gesture of care for the memory of those who are no longer here, and who had chosen as their task in this land precisely that of making memory. The portraits have already been used in protest actions in Atlanta, New York, Berlin, Seattle, Naples, as is the case with many of the artist's projects. The drawings become material for communication, they are in the hands of the citizens who move with their bodies to places far away from each other to demand truth and justice, to demand answers, to demand in this case a cease-fire. The act of drawing the faces of those behind the lens, carefully searching for a photo from which to make a portrait (which is not trivial, since journalists and media workers do not have a narcissistic vocation, they are more attracted to others...) is a form of extreme thanksgiving, a collective ritual of atonement, a tenacious desire aimed at not letting go of the face of someone dear to us, even if we never knew him, even if we will never know him now. This is a work in progress that closely follows the cartography of the massacre recorded by CPJ - Committee to Protect Journalists, cites sources and constitutes an explicit political warning that cannot be ignored. The ongoing extermination of those using a target other than a rifle has had an unprecedented peak in the ongoing conflict, constituting a kind of systematic extermination of the media in the Palestinian territories and the Gaza Strip in particular. As of 3 May 2024, at least 97 journalists in the broad sense have been killed in the conflict that broke out in October 2023 certified by the CPJ - Committee to Protect Journalists: of the 115 journalists killed, 110 were Palestinian, 2 Israeli and 3 Lebanese. 33 journalists were injured, 2 journalists are currently missing; 52 journalists were arrested. There are also reports of assaults, threats, attacks on the network, censorship and the killing of family members as an intimidating message. How could this happen? And how can one think of at least having the opportunity to know ex post facto what happened in these bloody months, if journalists are physically eliminated, without this being felt to undermine the possibility of truth?