Jasper van Putten

We won’t be silent is a community art project by pro-Palestine supporters in Basel, mostly Basel4Palestine. About a month into the genocide in Gaza I did not know what or how to convey my feelings about the genocide in my art. I was numb, sad, and angry but I couldn’t find images that conveyed the horrors that I saw on my phone. Still, the silence surrounding the genocide was so deafening that I felt I had to make some kind of statement, however lacking it would be. The only thing I felt that I could draw was this feeling of inability to express myself. I therefore drew a rough image of a scream-based face in graphite, taped a cross over the mouth, scanned it and posted it on my Instagram account. It wasn’t much but I thought the image had potential. More potential than the drawing of war criminal Antony Blinken who I drew as an Angel of Death the next day.  

The following images were used as reference for the painting Safe Zone. All images link to the original social media post or news article that contains the original photo or video.