A Day in the Life. Young Palestinian Artists in Gaza Now

From Wednesday, April 29th to Wednesday, May 6th, the curatorial project Grandi Sogni takes shape at BASE with the group exhibition curated by Yasmine Aljarba, A Day in the Life, Young Palestinian Artists in Gaza Now, presenting works by Yara Zahoud, Adell Al-Toul, Shahd Matar, Aya Ashour, Adam Mghari, Rasha Al-Jundi, Hamada Al-Qabt, Fatima Hassouna, Yasmine Aljarba, Hiba G. Isleem, Sama Shatat, and Ali Asfour.

"Art does not seek to escape the darkness,
but builds a new relationship with the light,
however fragile."
Yasmine Aljarba

Twelve young Palestinian artists, either resident in Gaza or recently arrived in Europe, lend their gaze to create a narrative suspended between roots and distance, memory and the present. Through videos, photographs, installations, and a cinema space, the exhibition A Day in the Life presents fragments of complex lives, transforming individual experience into a universal language. Rejecting the reductive representation of conflict and the spectacularization of pain, the exhibition focuses on the micro-details of human beings and their capacity to resist and persevere in everyday life, exploring the subtle boundary between intimate experience and historical testimony. Through writing, the recovery of photographs, home videos, and family archives, the artists construct a personal memory intertwined with the collective dimension.
Oral history practices and the use of sensorial elements—ashes, perfumes, symbolic objects—become devices for overcoming destruction and transforming routine under siege into narratives of dignity. Places of origin and native villages are removed from pure geographical measurement to be reconstructed as maps of affection and spirit. A Day in the Life thus becomes a visual investigation of the dualities that mark life: light and darkness, hope and fear, strength and fragility. Trauma and rubble are sublimated into a poetic visual universe, where art does not seek to escape the darkness, but rather builds a new relationship with light, establishing itself as an act of resistance and healing.

Yasmine Aljarba (Gaza, 1989) is a Palestinian visual artist, curator, and researcher whose work combines painting, conceptual photography, and video art; she has lived and worked in Milan since 2023. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions in Gaza, Rome, Milan, Venice, and Bergamo. Her work explores memory, roots, identity, and uprooting, documenting the Palestinian experience inside and outside Gaza and investigating the presence and absence of the body and the land.

Grandi Sogni is an international research, artistic production, and design project dedicated to contemporary visual cultures and materials in Palestine. Scientific Committee: Andrea Zanella,
Marco Negroni, Fabio Iannotta, Lucrezia Cippitelli, Rosanna Ruscio, Domenico Scudero. The project is promoted by the Brera Academy of Fine Arts as part of JERUS-IT-ARTS, funded by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Mission 4 Component 1 Investment 3.4). A multidisciplinary program spread across several Milanese institutions—exhibitions, lectures,
performances, screenings, and interventions in public spaces. At its core is the memory of Palestine and its communities. In collaboration with BASE Milano, Zona K, and Casa degli Artisti.

Curated by Yasmine Aljarba
April 29 - May 6, 2026
BASE Milano

Opening April 29, 6:30 PM - 9:30 PM
Finissage May 6, 6:30 PM - 9:30 PM
Exhibition Hours
Thursday - Wednesday 9:30 AM - 6:30 PM
Friday Closed