A 26-year-old Palestinian artist saved himself mentally and emotionally inside an Israeli prison by painting on the walls of his cell, Anadolu Agency reported.
Palestinian artist Mohammad Aziz Atef recently completed his sentence— eight months in prison, said drawing paintings gave him a cause to survive dark days inside the jail.
Speaking to Anadolu Agency to mark World Youth Skills Day on Friday, Atef said, “These paintings and my skill were my way to save myself inside the jail. The jail is a well-structured space to kill you with your energy, since there is no way to give this energy to the universe, so it can kill you.”
The Israeli prison authorities do not allow any special tools for paintings. Atef, therefore, struggled to obtain papers, either by buying them at high prices in the prison canteen or by smuggling them from abroad.
As per media reports, Atef said he used dry pens, pencils and note paper as rulers for colour and portrait sketches, and coffee to draw hundreds of his works. He used highly concentrated coffee, as a pigment to change the colour of the paper.
The Israeli army arrested Atef in November 2021, from his home in the town of Birzeit, north of Ramallah in the central West Bank. He was sentenced to eight months in prison for his activities that were classified as “threatening security”.
