Malak Mattar grew up in occupied territory and has been creating art since her teenage years. She left Gaza just before the war broke out on 7 October 2023. She was the first artist from Gaza to have a solo exhibition at Central Saint Martins in London, where she studied a masters of fine art, and her work has since been exhibited in over 80 countries. Mattar’s paintings bear witness to resilience, femininity and hope, and stand as a defiant stance against war, injustice and inequality.

No words ... (for Gaza) is Mattar's first monograph. Experts Louisa MacMillan, Dr Winnie Wong, Dr Vijay Prashad and Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, shed light on the significance of her work, and her paintings enter into dialogue with poems by the Palestinian authors of the collective We Are Not Numbers.