Pablo Picasso’s ‘Motherhood’ covered with image of Palestinian mother and child
London’s National Gallery has again become the site of political protest. On October 10th, two activists from the Youth Demand group pasted a photograph of a Palestinian mother and child over the top of Pablo Picasso’s 1901 work Motherhood.
According to the campaign group, this stunt was carried out in order to draw attention to the horrors occurring in Gaza and the fact that Israel is being sold armaments by the United Kingdom.
After entering the gallery on the morning of October 10th, two activists – identified as Jai Halai, 23, and Monday-Malachi Rosenfeld, 21 – made their way to Motherhood, before pasting a large image of a distressed mother and child onto the painting’s protective glass. The pair also doused the floor surrounding the painting with red paint.
The photograph, originally taken by photojournalist Ali Jadallah at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza earlier this year, is among the most striking images of the situation in Palestine thus far. The mother and child in the photograph are similar in pose to those depicted by Picasso, which is likely the predominant reason for choosing that painting in particular.
In a video posted to social media following the protest, NHS worker Halai said, “I’m taking action with Youth Demand because, at this point, it’s been over one year of seeing my colleagues in the healthcare field decimated. Decimated by bombs, by bullets and by having to operate, with no medical equipment, on starved children.”
Meanwhile, International Relations student Rosenfeld said, “I am taking action because as a Jew, I feel like it’s my duty to call out the genocide being committed in Gaza. I want the world to know this isn’t in the Jewish name, and I want to see a free Palestine.”
Rosenfeld added, “When Keir Starmer says Britain stands with Israel, he’s wrong. We know very well that this is a genocide, not ‘self defence’ and we, as the people of Britain, say enough is enough.”
Both activists were quickly detained by security forces at the National Gallery, who also removed the image from Picasso’s work. A spokesperson for the gallery has since confirmed that there has been no lasting damage done to the work: “The room reopened to the public at 2.30pm,” they said, “There has been no damage to any paintings.”
Previously, the National Gallery has been targeted multiple times by the campaign group Just Stop Oil. Back in 2022, two protestors threw canned soup over Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in order to protest the continued use of fossil fuels. When those original activists were sentenced to jail time earlier this year, three more Just Stop Oil activists doused Van Gogh’s work in soup, and were promptly arrested.
