������

Photographs and video footage of wars shock all audiences — young or old. Capturing moments with pen and pencil can be a powerful response to violent images filtered through a photo camera and shared directly on smartphones.

In (OR Books, 2025), a 144-page book by Lebanese artist , simple black drawings on a white background — combined with snappy, powerful messages — chronicle the continued systematic onslaught of violence committed against Palestinians during the genocide in Gaza since 7 October 2023.

“I started drawing on 9 October in reaction to what looked like a massacre that won’t stop anytime soon, and hasn't stopped since,” Mazen tells��������, condemning the violence committed against Palestinians and emphasising that most of the victims are children.

“The project then developed alongside the unfolding genocide,” he adds. He��started posting the drawings on 9 October 2023 and they were all made with the purpose to be published online to protest, create awareness, and “resist” one way or another.

“In 2006, I drew and posted online the Israeli war on Lebanon,” Mazen continues. “I learned then something that I used again and pushed further with the war on Gaza, and that is that drawings are much more powerful than the photos and videos of the horrors.”

Living in a real dystopia��

From his home in Berlin, Mazen, exposed to photo and video recordings of the genocide in Gaza circulating widely on the internet, captures the anxieties of an artist unable to stop drawing in his book.

In December 2023, Mazen wrote on one page, “It's scary to see that we live in a real dystopia.”

He acknowledges the flow of fake news circulating on various media and denounces a world where (imperfect) democracies violate human rights.

Hoping to make war ultimately obsolete, in Mazen’s hands the book becomes a statement in support of the Palestinians and their innate sense of patience and determination, regardless of the circumstances.

For Mazen, it’s an invitation to join the conversation in solidarity with the right of the Palestinians to live in Gaza.

In the artist’s words: “I decided a long time ago that the drawing ‘Like a Palestinian’ from 25 February 2024 would close the book because it is the only one that gives a kind of ‘positive’ note and some hope.

"This is why all the drawings are not always in chronological order in the book. I made some arrangements to make it work as a self-sufficient book and not only as the diary of the genocide that it is.”

In saying this, Mazen shares that the book was initially published in French under the title Gaza in February 2025 by the French publisher (translated from English by Charlotte Woillez), with the English version taking longer to be released due to the publisher's schedule.

“The good side of this is that I managed to have two more drawings in the English version, again added at the last minute, one of which was made after the ongoing ‘ceasefire’,” Mazen notes.��

Artistic legacy��

A trumpeter who performs improvisation concerts when he isn’t sketching, Mazen’s passion for drawing and comic art stems from his parents' artistic roots.

Born in Beirut at the onset of the Lebanese civil war in 1975, Mazen is the son of famous Lebanese stage actor and artist, poet, and critic , who passed away in 2023.

Mazen's original works have been displayed in art galleries, museums, and art fairs. In 2015, he collaborated with his late mother, Laure, on , a book and exhibition at Beirut’s��showcasing a unique body of work based on the concept of an artist’s alphabet.

Currently, Mazen still resides in Berlin with his family.

He shares, “My life in Berlin changed radically since 7 October, like the lives of all those showing any kind of solidarity with the Palestinian people or opposing the ongoing genocide,” adding, “especially when these people are refugees.”

The violent repression, along with ongoing censorship and cancellation, is difficult to live with, he admits, “particularly when you think that Berlin was a haven for open speech, and culture and arts."

He adds, "But as difficult as it is, it is nothing compared to what they are enduring in Palestine (and in Lebanon), so we cannot but fight back. And doing this book is my way of resisting and counterattacking.”

Personal and autobiographical��

Mazen is the author of several books, along with numerous short stories and illustrations in daily papers and magazines — not only in his native Lebanon but also in Europe and North America.

Mazen is also a leading figure in the Lebanese comics and art scene, where his compressed, Picasso-esque self-portraits have become his trademark.

His publications include (L’Association, 2007), a diary of the 2006 war in Lebanon told through drawings, comics, and prose; , Tamyras Editions, 2014), comprising 382 drawings in a cheap diary, created day by day throughout 2012, using various mediums such as ink, watercolour, and charcoal; and the serialised graphic novel (Samandal, 2019-2022), which revisits several moments in the life of his father and Lebanon's history.

In 2019, with the French publishers Actes Sud BD & Arte Éditions, Mazen also published the comic book .

Through one-page stories, he paints a portrait of Lebanon, a country full of contradictions, caught between war, immigration, freedom of the press, and ecology.

“All my work has always been very personal and autobiographical, and as such it is political just by the fact that I am a Lebanese artist," he says.

"As soon as I take a pen or a trumpet, I am making a political gesture.”

Elisa Pierandrei is an Italian journalist and author based in Milan. She writes and researches stories across art, literature, and the visual media. Elisa holds a master's degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from the American University in Cairo (2002), after graduating in Arabic Language and Literature at Ca' Foscari University in Venice (1998)

Follow her on X:��