From Palestinian resistance to movements worldwide, art documents hope, reality and solidarity
By Daniyah Yaqoob
Zahra Siddiqui’s photography career sparked from a five-minute conversation. As an observer of Toronto’s music scene—her twin sister being a singer-songwriter in the city—Siddiqui gained an affinity for picking up the small details. She would notice individuals in group settings and think to herself, “Nobody has a clue we are here, how much space we take up in hiding.” In each person, she saw a story waiting to be represented.
Almost 11 years ago, Siddiqui made an off-hand remark to an artist friend about liking photography. All it took was a two-word response that changed Siddiqui’s world: “Do it.”
With 350 dollars to spare, Siddiqui and her friend immediately drove to Future Shop and bought her first camera, one that would aid the first four years of her career as a portrait photographer, highlighting the intersectionality of marginalized communities.
But Siddiqui’s commitment to using her platforms as a way to inspire social justice came much before she bought her camera.
“Before [being a photographer], I was a child and youth worker. I had already known that I wanted to be in a space where I could be a part of amplifying the communities that I was around,” she said.
Jason Samilski, executive director of Canadian Artists Representation (CARFAC) Ontario said art can act as a “signal” to encourage social change. “One way to think about art [is] not necessarily a tool for social change, but rather a product or perhaps a reflection of that change.”
In an age of humanitarian tragedies, social upheaval and political movements—from global racism, gender discrimination, faith-based persecution, climate change and many more inequities—art plays a crucial role in pursuing justice and awareness.
About four years into her career, Siddiqui became frustrated with herself as an artist, feeling as though she had plateaued. In 2012, Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black boy, was followed, shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch volunteer. Zimmerman’s acquittal was one of many driving forces that stirred the beginnings of the Black Lives Matter movement.
During this time, Siddiqui realized taking portraits wasn’t enough for her to feel like she was making an impact.
As a naturally quiet person, visual arts was her way of communicating. “I’m a very quiet type of person in my social justice but the images, the vibrancy, the faces, that’s loud. If you’re paying attention,” Siddiqui said.
She wanted to do more, so she combined her photography with mixed media elements to create compelling collages.
“The political climate just catapulted me into this new version of myself as an artist, which is where ‘The Invisible Majority’ was created,” Siddiqui explained.
Elle Alconcel, an art and music curator in Toronto approached Siddiqui in 2016. For the cultural hub Daniels Spectrum—located in the heart of Regent Park—Siddiqui created 150 mixed media portraits, blending ideas of diversity and justice. For instance, she clipped newspaper headlines onto portraits to put social issues in close perspective.
She named the exhibit ‘The Invisible Majority’—and the name stuck as her brand name. Her portraits and mixed media primarily capturing Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) are committed to bringing their identities into the spotlight through her work.
“There is something in my heart and my soul that is restless and needs to talk”
For artists like Siddiqui, art is much more than the dictionary-defined “conscious use of skill” or “creative imagination.” It can play a role in resistance, justice and peace.
Aia Bakir is a fourth-year sociology student at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) and a self-titled multidisciplinary artist. From poetry and spoken word to painting and photography, she’s dabbled in many different artistic mediums.
“Art is the soul trying to speak,” she explained. “There is something in my heart and my soul that is restless and needs to talk. And it finds its ways, whether through writing or painting.”
Through their creative mediums, many young people are not just engaging in an act of self-expression but also using their art as a form of activism, making statements and hoping to spark social change.
Siddiqui calls it “gentle disruption”—something she sees as more effective than some forms of traditional protest.
“My way is a silent strength that I want to give to people,” she said. “I’m trying to do work that highlights visibility and representation for people who need it.”
BIPOC people make up a “visible minority,” as the Employment Equity Act refers to racialized people in Canada. In 2021, three racialized groups—South Asians, Chinese people and Black people—made up 16.1 per cent of Canada’s population. Studies, like one from the Journal of Higher Education Policy, indicate that “Canada is a racially stratified society that privileges Whiteness pertaining to access to resources, in this case, education and employment.”
For Siddiqui, it’s important to challenge these inequities through mediums such as photography. She turns the term “visible minority” on its head, to become the “Invisible Majority.”
Samilski said part of the role art plays in seeking justice is reinterpreting social systems.
“Art prompts us to question our realities and very quickly—and rather efficiently—dismantle and rebuild those notions of reality,” he said.
For Siddiqui, the act of resistance does not always come from the final product. The act of creation itself, of searching for and highlighting unseen identities, is a means of freeing herself.
“I create for myself first,” she said. “I can’t show up in the world authentically if I’m creating from a place that’s not authentic.”
When her portraits enter the world—turned into collages with mixed media elements like textiles and jewelry—they still have a goal of inspiring change within individual people.
“I think my work is about the simple act of highlighting someone. That’s it, just an individual,” she said. “If I can spend time energetically sharing space with somebody and they felt safe with me to take their portrait, that in itself is an act of care and safety and empowerment—for not just me, but the person I spent time with.”
For Bakir, art similarly plays a role in engaging individuals and building a community.
“It’s not anyone’s responsibility to make change for others. It’s our responsibility to make change for ourselves”
In many of Toronto’s artistic corners, Bakir has performed spoken word. In the Bampot House of Tea late last year, she did the same. Under warm lights, she stood before a crowd of listeners. A friend who she had introduced to the spoken word community had fallen in love with the medium. He invited her to the event as a featured writer—an opportunity Bakir was grateful for.
Surrounded by bohemian paintings, Bakir read poems about her Syrian identity. Some detailed the 2023 earthquake in Syria, an expression of the deep emotion and pain tied to the land she called home. To a diverse audience, sitting close to each other in the tight tea house, she read poems she wrote documenting the genocide in Palestine. There was electricity travelling in their closeness, and though the poem itself was a release of emotion, sharing it with a crowd was a source of healing for Bakir too.
The issues Bakir writes about and the emotions she expresses have been building for decades from her lived experiences. As an artist, she documents these experiences to share with an audience she hopes will find comfort in relatability. When her words fail, Bakir uses visual art to release her feelings.
Especially since the start of Israel’s siege on Gaza, Bakir’s art and writing have turned to resist mainstream narratives in media surrounding the genocide in Gaza and highlight the Palestinian story.
According to Al Jazeera, as of April 4, 2025, around 62,614 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7, 2023—though a study from The Lancet argues that the number is much higher. A review by the Al Jazeera Media Institute suggests that Western coverage of the siege has been skewed with a pro-Israel bias. In times like these, Bakir said art has a role to play in documenting truth.
“Art has a great role in the documenting aspect of [Palestinian] collective experience. And it humanizes it,” she said.
The works of fourth-year fashion student Nazha Syriani—ranging from jewelry-making and crochet to fashion design—is also influenced by the urge to seek justice in Palestine. Syriani is half-Palestinian—she said her art is a firm reminder to the world that her people’s existence cannot be erased.
“It’s important for us that we continue to showcase who we are, to let the world know…that we’re not going to go away, we’re always going to be here and fight for our freedom,” she said.
Bakir said she finds it her obligation as an artist to witness what is happening around her and then “echo” it through her creative mediums. She thinks it is a way to find and build community, around collective grief.
To Bakir, all of this—artists channelling their emotions and sharing it for people to resonate with—is a form of resistance. Above all, the ability of art to pave visions for the future is the greatest form of rebellion, in her view.
Bakir said art can help to create a vision for the future, though many may not have the ability to envision a future beyond this imminent destruction of Gaza. “That’s where art comes in to create that sense of future.”
With contrasting visions of Gaza’s future from politicians worldwide—some which call for further displacement of Palestinians and the erasure of their identity—significant amounts of harm are continually perpetuated.
Weeks after assuming his presidency in January, United States President Donald Trump posted an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated video to his Truth Social app. In it, people emerge from a besieged Gaza into a skyscraper-filled beach, complete with a gold statue of Trump, money raining from the sky over Elon Musk and a large gold arch marking that “Trump Gaza” is here. AI-generated vocalists sing his praises, celebrating the president to “set Gaza free.” Intentions to cleanse Gaza are no longer thinly veiled—instead, they are visualized and celebrated by many.
In times such as these, where oppression openly continues despite claims of peacetimes, art becomes a form of resistance. According to Bakir, it draws on imagination to provide hope that there is a Palestinian future—no matter how much pushback the art or the Palestinian freedom movement is met with.
In fact, Samilski said art is not always meant to be well-digested. Instead, it pokes, prods and interrogates reality to create new visions, something he said is an “essential” part of human existence.
“Art antagonizes the consensus reality, and you’ll see that that reality begins to pixelate and it can fracture. So in this dimension, this is one reason why art is both dangerous, but also central to the human experience,” he said.
Syriani’s creativity not only expresses her personal political ideology, but she seeks to have a direct impact on the lives of Palestinians in Gaza, by using her art as a way to generate donations for them. Her creations—some including watermelon keychains and beaded bracelets—regularly go up for sale at charity events.
Her art also boldly claims her pride in her heritage. She hopes to establish her own fashion line in the future and would name it ‘Nazha’ after her first name, also one she shares with her grandmother. She said it is an act of resilience for her to embrace her identity at a time when the Palestinian identity is under threat of erasure.
Gaëlle Morel, an art historian and curator at TMU’s Image Arts Centre, said art alone is not anything more than art—it does not inherently have political ambitions. Yet, she said, everyone’s existence as human is, in itself, political according to her.
“You make decisions, you have values, your morals, you have convictions,” she said. “Being is political.”
While she and Samilski agree that art is not inherently political, Morel said art is interesting because it allows for interpretation.
Morel said a painting of a garden could plainly capture a garden—loving strokes which make tree leaves and flower buds and nothing more. But a painting of a garden could be interpreted as so much more, even sparking ideas around ecological crisis. Samiliski added that because of this varied interpretation, it is important to be cautious when instrumentalizing art as a tool for resistance. Instead, an artist’s depictions of the world may incline the audience to enact certain changes within their society.
Morel, who has curated exhibitions at the Image Arts Centre—which showcase inherently political photography—said the goal is never to send a specific message to the audience. The photographs she chooses to display do not themselves enact change.
“It’s more like art is only here to propose something to us creatively,” she said.
Siddiqui agreed about the role of an artist in creating change. She said the freedom to create, without any expectation, is the most gratifying part of the artistic process.
“It’s not anyone’s responsibility to make change for others. It’s our responsibility to make change for ourselves,” she said.
According to Samilski, the role of the artist is to make the observations that non-artists do not see, present those in artistic ways and help the average person come at an issue from a new angle.
Tangible change should not be expected from artists—Morelle and Samilski agree that any expectation of their work having to cause social waves is limiting their end result, and ultimately, their expression.
For Syriani, who has built a community surrounded by artists who create for Palestine, art plays a similar role in unification. “It helps people who may be feeling suppressed,” she said. “[Art] will inspire them to also follow in their passion.”
Samilski said, “[Art brings] people together over a shared cultural experience where we together get to witness art.” He added, “Together we can undergo that process where our realities are questioned, reconstructed.”
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