Resisting Complicity: Art Workers For Palestine Scotland on their activism

Three months ago, following the 7 October massacre by Hamas operatives, the world watched in horror as Israel’s 80 year-long genocide of the Palestinian people escalated so horrifically that it was difficult to comprehend. With backing from its historical allies the UK and the US, Israel launched an attack from the ground, sea and air that has resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 Palestinian citizens in the besieged Gaza Strip and the Occupied Territories, as well as the deaths of a number of innocent civilians in Lebanon. Over 7,000 are missing, presumed dead under the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli airstrikes. America and Europe’s unyielding and committed support of Israel signals that the West’s genocidal, white supremacist and Islamophobic intent remains as vicious as ever. 

Art Workers For Palestine Scotland (AWFPS) was founded in May 2021, in response to Israeli attempts to evict Palestinian families from the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, as well as the subsequent violent attack on the Al-Aqsa Mosque by the Israeli military. In a pattern of violence that has come to define Israel’s settler-colonial project, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) launched strikes into the Gaza Strip and carried out raids in the West Bank. In response, Palestinians across the Occupied Territories went on strike on 18 May that year, part of the Unity Intifada that occurred across historic Palestine. It was in response to these events, and the launching of the Unity Intifada: The Manifesto of Dignity and Hope, that AWFPS was formed. However, as representatives from the organisation tell me, their formation and continued activism is deeply connected to other global struggles: "We decided to try to respond to this public declaration of new found resistance, historical memory… and a sense that something about 2021 felt like a turning point. This was impacted by the renewed Black Lives Matter (BLM) uprisings in 2020 and the deep structural links between BLM and Palestine. We noted there was this taboo of speaking about Palestine, breaking a silence around Palestine, the arts sector we’re all working with in Scotland. In our immediate aims, we decided to try to do all we could to break the silence, point to the silence, expose the silence. We felt there was a swelling of support and love for Palestine and yet this wasn’t reflected in our workplaces." Importantly, the organisation decided to name themselves as ‘art workers’, rather than ‘artists’: the group says this “signifies that there's a rift between workers and bosses, workers and institutions, and because there had been conversations about workers within the cultural sector being underunionised and artists not thinking of themselves as workers.” 

When Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank intensified in October 2023, the organisation began to meet, mobilise and undertake widespread direct action, alongside other organisations such as the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Over the past few months, AWFPS has organised sit-ins and protests at the Gallery of Modern Art and Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow and The National Gallery in Edinburgh. Reflecting on these interventions, activists tell me these actions aim to “expose the institutional silence around genocide – but there’s also something really powerful about our actions happening within these sites of imperial plunder. The painting we stood in front of in The National Gallery was a colonial painting depicting racialised people – there’s something powerful about speaking within and against the imperialist architecture of the long established art establishment.” They also note their “more subtle form” of protest at the Scottish BAFTAs, a successful attempt “to try and achieve a specific aim… of getting Scottish BAFTA guests to use our sign to call for a ceasefire.”

The success and impact of the group’s activism has created off-shoots of activists across Scotland who are actively resisting the complicity of Scotland and the UK in the genocide of Palestinians. AWFP Dundee was founded to focus attention on activism in Dundee by members of the wider Scotland group who had been attending the solidarity marches and were involved in other forms of action. Representatives of the organisation tell me: “Collectively our members have worked with – and continue to work with – every cultural institution in Dundee and the surrounding area. More and more local arts workers are joining us as they continue to lose respect for the institutions we represent and who claim to represent us. We are thoroughly disappointed in these institutions’ hypocritical silence in the face of genocide, and feel betrayed by their continued lack of action, despite building pressure from their artists, staff, and audiences.”

While there has been an explicit and notable distinction between Westminster and Holyrood’s approach to calling for a ceasefire, political involvement and solidarity from MPs and MSPs in Scotland has been limited. Representatives from AWFPS say that government calls for a ceasefire are the bare minimum: “Calling for a ceasefire is not enough; they're not calling for sanctions, suspending the arms sales or charging leaders with war crimes. It's one thing to call for a ceasefire, humanitarian aid and to ‘open our doors’ for any refugees who actually want to come or have had to leave, but they’re still not addressing the issue and complicity of UK arms sales, Scotland-based factories producing weapons and the presence of Thales” (a company that builds weapons that are sold to the Israeli state, who have factories in both Rosyth and Glasgow).

AWFP Dundee also note a similar, limited local response: “Our local MPs and most of our MSPs (excluding the Tories) have voted in favour of a ceasefire and we support that, but we also recognise there are other people in powerful positions who we need to pressure into taking a stance, speaking up, using their platforms to decry injustice and oppose genocide… and generally putting their money where their mouth is. We are immensely disappointed in and disgusted by our city’s cultural leaders for lacking the bravery and humanity to leverage their powerful positions to effect change.”

The art world is very much complicit in the West’s continued support of Israel’s occupation and genocide. This has revealed what many people – particularly members of the global majority – have known for years; that not only is the art world deeply complicit in this genocide, it is still deeply racist, Islamophobic and anti-Black. Art institutions are more than happy to co-opt artists of colour and artists from marginalised groups for its own vapid virtue signalling and optics of being ‘de-colonial’, at the cost of genuine care, action and change. However, what has been revealed in the last few weeks is that any apparent support, solidarity and care from institutions has been purely self-serving. 

One of the most chilling developments in the arts and culture sector has been the systemic cancellation, and even dismissal, of artists, curators and writers who have criticised Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. One of the most notable and well-publicised was the firing of Artforum’s editor-in-chief David Velasco, who signed an open letter calling for Palestinian liberation that was published by an unknown employee of Artforum. This censorship and de-platforming of pro-Palestine voices has become particularly intense in Germany and the US. But arts workers are starting to resist this blatant attempt at silencing. Closer to home, Bristol’s Arnolfini gallery’s decision to cancel its events for the Bristol Palestine Film Festival in December 2023 has led hundreds of cultural figures (including Tai Shani and Brian Eno) to pledge their refusal to work with the gallery. 

Here in Scotland, AWFPS have created a fantastic resource, called the Scottish Cultural Institutions Index, which lists Scottish arts institutions alongside their stance on the genocide – alongside references to their support or silence on Black Lives Matter and the conflict in Ukraine. The disparity between institutional stances on these two concerns versus their silence on the genocide of Palestinians is stark. This confirms that institutions have deep fears that making pro-Palestine statements will lead to loss of funding or support – because so many institutions are funded by bodies who are either explicitly pro-Israel or invest and trade with Israel. One of the largest of these funders is Edinburgh-based Baillie Gifford, who invest in companies linked to illegal settlements and settler violence in the West Bank – and who also invest in many Scottish arts institutions. The failure of arts institutions to put pressure on (and cut ties with) Baillie Gifford makes it crystal clear that they believe genocide is justified as long as the art world status quo can be maintained.

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You can find AWFPS's Scottish Cultural Institutions Index via their Instagram @artworkersforpalestinescotland