Berlin-based South African artist Candice Breitz has created a clothing campaign to raise funds for Gazan journalists and media workers. All profits are being donated to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) — a non-governmental professional organization representing approximately four-fifths of Palestine’s media workers. In May, the PSJ was awarded the annual UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, the only journalistic freedom award given by the United Nations.
Since Hamas’s October 7 attacks last year, the Israeli military’s bombardment of Gaza has killed upwards of 134 Palestinian journalists and media workers, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Breitz’s campaign, which launched last week, features black t-shirts, sweatshirts, and other items bearing a design with blocked text that reads, “Never Again Means Never Again” in a palette of blue and white, traditional colors in Judaism, and red and green, colors in the Palestinian flag.
The artist, who is Jewish, originally shared the design on Instagram for Holocaust Remembrance Day in January. Each item is named after a prominent Jewish figure like philosopher Nancy Fraser, poet Tomer Dotan Dreyfus, and filmmaker Nan Goldin, who was arrested along with some 200 activists during a sit-in for Palestine outside the New York Stock Exchange last month.
Breitz said in an email statement that each figure has “faced scorn in Germany over the last year” over expressing support for Palestine, adding that the country’s “unhinged crackdown” on pro-Palestine voices has not only affected Jews.
Over the past year, Breitz has been vocal about her condemnation of the German government’s support of Israel’s attacks on Gaza, which has strained her relationship with cultural institutions across the country. Last November, the Saarland Museum faced backlash when it axed a presentation of Breitz’s 13-channel video installation TLDR in response to online comments the artist had made decrying Israeli violence in Gaza. The museum said in a statement to the Guardian that it will not “offer artists a podium who don’t recognise Hamas’s terror as a breach of civilisation,” nor work with artists who “consciously or unconsciously suspend the clear distinction between legitimate and illegitimate action.”
Four months after the cancellation, the museum’s director resigned from her post.
“It is crucial that we find ways to express our support for journalism on the ground, as it is crucial that we continue to receive information from and about those who are most directly and grotesquely impacted by the ongoing and widespread humanitarian catastrophe in the region,” Breitz said in an October 30 Instagram post about the new campaign. She added that supporters can also contribute by ordering gift cards for loved ones in advance of the holiday season.
