Olive Trees Are Born in Gaza

Olive Trees Are Born in Gaza brought international artists and Palestinian voices together at Centre Cultural La Nau in Valencia from December 10, 2025, to March 22, 2026. Organized by the Universitat de València and curated by Escif and Teresa Juan, the exhibition used the continuing growth of an olive tree as a way to think about Palestinian dignity, survival and the possibility of a future. It included more than twenty works across photography, installation, painting, video and other forms.

Shepard Fairey’s contribution extended the exhibition beyond its rooms. The university’s press release identifies Can you hear us? as a temporary installation on La Nau’s north façade facing Plaça del Patriarca. Measuring eight by five and a half metres, the illustration formed part of the international Unmute Gaza campaign. That documented location matters: Fairey’s image addressed people in public space as well as visitors who entered the building.

The indoor and courtyard program included artists such as Emily Jacir, Lamia Ziadé, Blu and Banksy, together with Palestinian photojournalists. Escif also worked with the Palestinian Community of Valencia on painted panels in the cloister. The combination placed internationally recognizable authorship beside collective contributions. Rather than assuming that visibility means the same thing for every participant, the exhibition invited attention to whose experience an image carries and how that experience reaches an audience.

An adapted version followed at the Gregori Maians Social Sciences Library on the Tarongers Campus from April 28 to July 12, 2026. The university explicitly lists Fairey among the six participants in that later presentation. It does not establish that the façade-sized installation was reproduced there in the same format. The campus display should therefore be understood as a related occurrence with its own roster and setting, rather than an unchanged transfer of every object from La Nau.

The move from a cultural centre to a university library introduced a different encounter with the project. A visitor might approach an exhibition intentionally, while a library user could meet it in the course of another activity. Both settings make the project’s concern with presence and visibility concrete. The olive tree’s symbolic role links them, but the locations shape how the work can be encountered. The original opening date remains December 10; the later page’s isolated December 12 reference conflicts with its own itinerary and the original university announcement.