Statement:
I told you I loved you (Gaza Solidarity) is a print mural created and inspired by the Triangle Gaza Solidarity Encampment on UNC’s campus in May 2024. Block printing workshops were held each day during the encampment. Dozens of students, faculty, and community members participated in carving and printing blocks related to Palestine liberation. Many linoleum, rubber, and wood blocks stayed at the encampment throughout its duration, with an art area set up so that anyone could carve their own designs, finish or continue carving designs that others had started, and print the blocks onto fabric or their own clothes. The collective act of creating designs was a vital part of the energies of solidarity and community at the encampment.
The intention of creating this mural was to use the many blocks that had been carved by students and others at those workshops.
However, after the UNC police violently raided the encampment, attacking and arresting students in the early morning of April 30, many of our materials were confiscated, destroyed, or went missing.
We were able to recover some of the supplies and ink but weren’t able to retrieve many of the blocks people had made on site. Only a handful of the carved blocks remain from the encampment.
This print mural was created in early May, a collaborative project by several people who were involved in the Triangle Gaza Solidarity Encampment. We gathered over the course of a week to spend hours cutting new designs into blocks, printing the new designs as well as the few we had saved from the encampment, and wheatpasting the mural. Roughly 1,000 prints were made to compose the mural. The two lines of text are the opening lines from June Jordan’s poem
Intifada Incantation: Poem #8 for b.b. L., which had been shared and read throughout the encampment.
This project is a collaboration among Marin Carr-Quimet, Rebecca Pempek, Hông-An Truong, Mariah Jade, Cora McAnulty, Laurel Petri, Cecelia Tucker, Xuân June Truong-Dixon, Maria Sharpley-Truong, Baez Sharpley-Truong, and Raina Lee.