About The Artist

BANNER PHOTO

Exploring the human experience through atmospheric realism

Living my whole life in Gaza opened my eyes to the value of expressing the individual life.

Afranji’s art focuses on charcoal and graphite drawing, combining realism with acute attention to fine detail and clarity, with elements of expressionism that add layers of emotion.

PIX of Joudi painting:

Living all my life in Gaza opened my eyes to the value of expressing a single life.

Living all my life in Gaza opened my eyes to the value of expressing one life.

“Living all my life in Gaza opened my eyes to the value of expressing individual experience.”

Art focused on charcoal and graphite drawing, combining realism-with its attention to fine detail and clarity-with elements of expressionism to add an extra layer of emotion.

MY COPY, OG BELOW

Judy Afranji (b. 2000) is an expressive charcoal artist based in Gaza, whose practice explores the depths of the individual human experience. Her journey began as far back as she can remember, when she first held a coloured pencil at the age of —-, and then at 12, when she fell in love with the complex beauty of the human face. In 2022, she established herself as a pioneer in her community, becoming the first female Gazan artist to specialize in expressive charcoal drawing, relying on the primal simplicity of a single tool: a piece of charcoal you can find in the pit of a fire.

For years, Afranji has navigated a profound duality, studying dentistry at Al-Azhar University, and practicing in emergency rooms, while her true calling remained visual expression. This dedication faced its greatest test after Oct. 7, 2023 when she completed her dental internship amidst displacement and survival. Forcibly displaced to the south with nothing but the clothes on her back, she spent over a year stripped of her creative materials. When she finally returned home, reclaiming her medium, she arrived at a pivotal realization: beyond the survival of the emergency clinic, her core identity was that of a creator.

Driven by this reclamation, Afranji directed her practice toward communal healing. In the summer of 2025, amidst the depths of famine and conflict, she coordinated Beyond the Rubble; an art workshop for orphaned children who lost their parents and families to the war. Guiding these children to discover a love for creation during such a dark period profoundly expanded her heart and redefined her vision of what is possible through the power of art.

This extraordinary depth of work and spirit earned her a prestigious scholarship at the Saint-Étienne Higher School of Art and Design in France. While geopolitical complications and the blockade of the Gaza Strip currently delay her evacuation and safe passage to her school abroad, her art continues to transcend physical boundaries.

Afranji’s recent work is deeply impacted by these lived experiences, capturing raw, universal themes of identity crises, exhaustion and hopelessness, and the quiet prayer for salvation. Her works have been shared globally, with recent international exhibitions including Artists Against Genocide, and, Resurrected by Teesri Duniya Theatre in Montreal, Canada. Through the striking contrast of charcoal, Judy Afranji continues to reshape the landscape of contemporary expressive art, capturing the profound truth of what it means to remain human in a terrible, beautiful world.