Ahmed Muhanna أحمد مهنا

Ahmed Muhanna

أحمد مهنا

Ahmed Muhanna is a Palestinian visual artist from the Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from Al-Aqsa University, Palestine. His artistic practice places the human being at the center of the narrative and its memory, while the Palestinian reality serves as a space for reflection, documentation, and expression.

His first exhibition outside Gaza was the WFP and EU travelling container show, Gaza: Stories of Hope and Resilience, which toured Europe in two seasons (September to October 2025, May to June 2026), including the Institut du monde arabe in Paris. He could not leave Gaza to attend.

His works address themes of war, displacement, waiting, loss, resilience, and hope, while exploring the relationship between the individual, place, memory, and identity. Muhanna has developed a visual language that combines drawing, expressionism, Arabic calligraphy, visual imagery, and experimentation with different materials. In his work, the Palestinian reality is not presented merely as an external subject, but as a lived experience transformed into a visual trace and a human document.

Ahmed Muhanna focuses on transforming everyday details and human experiences into artworks that carry both documentary and emotional dimensions. He uses drawing as a means of preserving memory, confronting loss, and reshaping difficult experiences through an artistic language capable of communicating with audiences beyond geographical boundaries. During the war on Gaza, and due to the scarcity of traditional art materials, he began using humanitarian aid boxes and cardboard as surfaces for his drawings, along with charcoal and other locally available materials. These materials were transformed from ordinary remnants of daily life into carriers of memories related to war, displacement, and life under siege. The project of drawing on humanitarian aid boxes has become one of the most distinctive features of his contemporary artistic practice. It brings together material and context: a box that once carried food or essential supplies later becomes an artwork carrying the image and story of the people who lived through those circumstances.

Born in 1984, Muhanna is from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. He holds a BFA from Al-Aqsa University. Alongside his studio practice he works as an art therapist and facilitates art workshops for children. Notably, his Eltiqa residency, along with his art therapy practice and his Qattan Foundation.

workSourcing note, recorded 2026.09.17. The biographical details in this record (birth year 1984, Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, BFA from Al-Aqsa University, work as an art therapist and children's workshop facilitator, and the aid-box practice) were supplied by PAPA's Director of Operations and Art Collection Manager and are attributed by PAPA to the following published sources: PAPA, ArtZone, Mindshift Bern, Al Jazeera, The Art Newspaper, BBC Arabic, Anadolu, Artnet, and UN News, across July 2024 to July 2026, together with the artist's handle @ahmedmuhanna84