“Gaza Love” Monument Unveiled in Paterson, NJ

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Kyle Goen’s artwork anchors the city’s recently dedicated Gaza Square.

The city of Paterson, New Jersey, celebrated Palestine Day last Sunday, May 17, by unveiling its new Gaza Square on Main Street with a sculpture by artist and activist Kyle Goen.

Goen’s popular “Gaza Love” (2014–) design, realized in three dimensions, sits outside of Paterson’s Southside library branch to commemorate the city’s large diasporic Palestinian community at a time of profound loss.

“I call the work ‘Gaza Love’ to communicate that love is solidarity — that it’s resistance,” Goen told Hyperallergic in a phone call. “Love isn’t passive. What pushes us forward is love for ourselves and humanity, and wanting to see people live.”

Invoking the typography of Robert Indiana’s ubiquitous LOVE (1964–) series, Goen’s design has worked as a tool in organizing spaces for over a decade, originally emerging during protests against the 2014 Gaza War. Prints of “Gaza Love” were also prevalent throughout the 2021 Strike MoMA movement, during which several grassroots activist organizations targeted the Museum of Modern Art’s trustees whose finances were tied to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, among other examples of exploitation in the realm of “toxic philanthropy.”

Goen distributes the prints on the ground during actions and interventions, but has also provided organizers and other community members with the design file to print their own batches, adding that “this is bigger than me.”

“Art is so compromised with capitalism,” the artist told Hyperallergic. “It’s important that artists are doing this work, because I think we’ve actually lost our way in devoting our practices to museum shows, gallery representation, and art fairs. We have to recall what shapes our moral compass, and let that help us move forward.”

Anchored by Goen’s work, Gaza Square was enshrined on a five-block stretch of Main Street that had been renamed Palestine Way in 2022 in recognition of South Paterson’s robust Palestinian community. The sculpture was sponsored by the local business association, the Palestinian American Community Center, and several other cultural and faith-based organizations.

Fabricated by a local signage business in Paterson, Goen’s artwork borrows the colors of the Palestinian flag. He explained that the work celebrates the perseverance of the Palestinian people rather than serving as a marker of loss and dehumanization.

“We’re past the point of conversations,” he said. “ This is hopefully a reminder that our commitment to Palestine needs to become stronger and louder.”