A memorial mural dedicated to Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 10 months, who were kidnapped and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists while in captivity, was vandalized earlier this month during a memorial service for the victims of the October 7, 2023, attacks.
The artwork was created by contemporary pop artist and activist AleXsandro Palombo, known for his thought-provoking installations, including a visual of the late former pope, Pope Francis, holding a buoy while the body of a drowned Syrian toddler, 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, who died in 2015 while fleeing the Middle East, lay at his feet.
The Bibas family mural was installed in Milan, Italy, outside the Qatari consulate.
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“In recent years, parts of the political left and activist movements have ended up legitimizing extremist pro-Palestinian factions that do not talk about peace, but about hatred. They do not defend the rights of the Palestinians, they exploit them and effectively promote the propaganda of the throat-cutters of Hamas.”
Shiri’s face was obscured by an image originally created by Vancouver street artist iHeart, depicting a boy addicted to digital feedback and crying because of Instagram likes.
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The mural of Shiri Bibas and her two young sons in Milan, Italy, by contemporary artist and activist AleXsandro Palombo, was defaced during a memorial service for the victims of the attacks on October 7, 2023. (AleXsandro Palombo)
Creative adjustments were made, including a red rose on the boy’s forehead, with the words “No War” displayed below the image.
Stanley Park’s artwork gained viral attention in 2014 after catching the attention of elusive artist Banksy.
Palombo determined that the desecration of the Bibas family monument “was not an act of protest, but a serious desecration.”
“This is not a dialogue between works of art, but a deliberate act of erasure,” he said. “That face was not chosen to add meaning, but to obscure it. It is an attempt to replace a specific, painful and documented memory with a generic, emotional image that mocks and lends itself easily to manipulation. It is a way to strip suffering of its meaning and turn it into an ideological mask.”
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The identity of the person who defaced Shiri’s image remains unknown. However, Palombo said Islamic fundamentalism is gaining support even in Milan, a city he said should symbolize “openness, democracy and civic consciousness.”
Palombo also claims that anti-Semitism was a factor in the defacement.
“It’s not about expressing an opinion, it’s about undermining memory, attacking public space, normalizing hatred through visual gestures. Anti-Semitism today is not marching, it is seeping in. It disguises itself as debate, appropriates shared languages, infiltrates the arts to silence other voices. And when freedom of expression is used to deny that of others, it is no longer freedom, it is a strategy of destabilization.”
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This undated photo provided by Hostages Family Forum shows Shiri Bibas, who was kidnapped and taken to Gaza on October 7, 2023. (Hostage family forum via AP)
The damage to the mural of the Bibas family is not the first of Palombo’s works to be disrespected.
In 2024, just hours after the unveiling of a mural dedicated to Nova Festival survivor Vlada Patapov, the artwork was damaged.
Palombo’s murals dedicated to Auschwitz survivor Sami Modiano, Italian Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre and Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor Edith Bruck have also been vandalized in the past.
“My art is not a decoration, it is a testimony,” Palombo said. “Anyone who thinks they can erase it with a spray can or a threat has already lost.”
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“The risk of vandalism is real, but it is not a deterrent, it is part of the battlefield of memory,” he said. “Balancing the need to honor the victims with the challenges of public art means that we must accept that each work is also a bulwark, an act of visual resistance. And when someone disfigures it, he does not weaken it: he makes it even more necessary.”
