Equals My Dollar

How many days?
How many bodies?
How many nights?
How many stories?

Blood on your hands,
victims are plenty,
my eyes are open,
my heart is heavy.

Tell me why the price of someone else's life equals my dollar.

Dimensions:  17" H x 16" W x 6.5" D  (43cm H x 40cm W x 16.5cm D)

Materials: Clay, glaze, oxides, ink

Year: 2026

Price: Upon request

Giving back: 10% of my net proceeds from this piece will be donated to a nonprofit aligned with the social issue behind the work: UNRWA 

The Truth Behind:

— This Piece —
Equals My Dollar confronts the viewer with one of humanity's most painful mirrors: our capacity for silence in the face of documented, witnessed, named suffering. The piece draws parallels between the genocides of the twentieth century and the ongoing war in Gaza, urging us to question our collective response when history does not merely repeat itself, it repeats itself in real time, on our screens, in our hands.

The central female figure emerges from fragmented ruins, abstracted remnants of what was once home, rising upward. Her elongated neck and upward gaze speak not of triumph, but of the stubborn insistence of the human body to exist, to endure, to transcend what has been done to it. Through this work, I seek to evoke reflection on complicity, on the moral weight of witnessing, and on the unbearable gap between knowing and acting.

What do we do, or fail to do, while atrocity unfolds in real time, in front of us?

— The Social Issue — 

As of 2026, more than 70,000 Palestinians have been reported killed in Gaza since October 2023, according to figures published by the Gaza Health Ministry and cited in reports by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The UN notes that these figures are based on data provided by Gaza health authorities and continue to undergo verification processes.
United Nations OCHA – Reported Impact Snapshot (April 2026)

Data published by UN Women in April 2026 reported that more than 38,000 women and girls had been killed during the war, while thousands more people remain missing beneath the rubble or unaccounted for amid the destruction.

A peer-reviewed demographic study discussed by researchers affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research estimated that by late 2025, the total number of conflict-related deaths may have exceeded 100,000 when accounting for unrecorded deaths, missing persons, and indirect mortality caused by the collapse of healthcare, sanitation, and infrastructure. (The Guardian)

The humanitarian consequences extend far beyond immediate casualties. A 2024 demographic analysis estimated that life expectancy in Gaza had fallen by nearly 47%, representing one of the sharpest declines in modern recorded history. (The Guardian)
The UN and European Union issued a joint warning on Monday that human development across Gaza has been set back by a staggering 77 years, with $71.4 billion needed over the next decade for recovery and reconstruction. That’s according to the final Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA), jointly conducted with the UN-partnered World Bank.

The impact on the lives of Gazans is just as devastating: more than 60 per cent of the population having lost their homes and 1.9 million people displaced, often multiple times. Women, children, persons with disabilities, and those with pre-existing vulnerabilities bear the greatest burden. Over two years of conflict has resulted in more than 71,000 Palestinian fatalities and over 171,000 injured, according to local authorities, with many still missing under the rubble. (UN Genova)

In 1944, Raphael Lemkin created the word genocide so that the world could never again claim it lacked the language for what it was witnessing. The United Nations codified it four years later. And still, history kept testing it, Armenia (1.5 million), the Holocaust (6 million), Cambodia (2 million), Rwanda (800,000 in 100 days), each time, the word arriving too late, while the international community deliberated over definitions and the dying continued.

These are not abstractions. They are numbers, bodies, homes, and lives interrupted in real time. And still, the numbers continue to rise.

Equals My Dollar asks the question that no civilization has yet answered: how much suffering can be witnessed before witnessing becomes indifference?

This work was created in the understanding that art cannot stop a war. But it can refuse indifference.