This work pays tribute to the Global Sumud flotilla, a civil led initiative that sailed to Gaza in an attempt to break the Israeli blockage and deliver humanitarian aid and food to the Palestinian people. All over the world, people who couldn’t join the flotilla set paper ships sailing in solidarity.

Drawing upon his years as a journalist in China, Hayoun’s work also references the paper goods burned in South China on the Ching Ming holiday, when people remember loved ones who have passed. Fake money, paper suits and paper cars are burned in order to trans mutate into things the dead can use in the afterlife.

This painting recognises the bravery and humanity of everyday people who have rallied for Gaza around the world and the ultimate futility of their actions in the face of widespread political complicity. Seated at an empty table, surrounded by poppies (a symbol of Palestinian solidarity and bloodshed) Hayoun paints himself preparing his own paper ship, an act both valiant and futile as “whatever humanity does for Gaza now is a day late and a genocide short.”