In Wales, an artist sews names of Gaza’s infant victims on christening gown 

London, United Kingdom – To Diana Williams, a Welsh artist, a baby’s christening gown signifies purity and innocence.

Last year, she chose the dress as a way to pay tribute to some of the babies killed during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

She bought a vintage gown and in red thread embroidered it with the names of 300 victims.

“I’ve used it as a blank canvas, really,” she told Al Jazeera.

She immersed the hem in a harsh cleaning product to fray the ends.

“I wanted it torn and ragged to represent the conditions in which these people live under.

“When it’s actually hanging, the threads drop the viewer to the bottom where you can sense the profound loss, really, because they sort of pool at the bottom.

“It sort of resembles a bit like a pool of blood.”

Williams, a retired art lecturer, said she was “compelled” to make the artwork “for people to actually grasp the enormity of what is actually happening”.

It is titled Know Their Names after an interactive series of databases compiled by Al Jazeera naming some of the tens of thousands of victims of Israeli attacks. In January 2024, a long list included the names and ages of some of the children who were known at the time to have been killed in Gaza. Overall, Israel’s attacks since the start of its latest war on Gaza in October 2023 have killed more than 20,000 children.

The gown created by Williams features the names of babies under the age of one such as Sara, Elias, Mai and Mona.

Williams, who has three children and two grandchildren, has felt at a loss when watching mothers in Gaza mourn their daughters and sons. World leaders have failed Gaza, she said.

Holding back tears, she said, “All these politicians are fathers, mothers, aunties, uncles. They have children within their immediate family, and I can’t for the life of me understand how this is allowed to carry on.

“I find it’s the average person that’s showing sort of empathy if you like, and I don’t find that the politicians are calling it out at all.”

The gown won a people’s award in January at Galeri Caernarfon, an arts space in Caernarfon, Wales. Williams donated the prize money to Medical Aid for Palestinians. It has been exhibited elsewhere in Wales and has been shortlisted to be displayed at the National Eisteddfod, an annual cultural festival.

The suffering of Gaza’s Christian minority moved Williams, especially after she read about parents rushing to baptise their babies, driven by fear of their deaths.

“I don’t think anything has touched me as much as Gaza, to be honest, and I feel I have to do something,” she said.

Later this year, the empty gown adorned with the names of the war’s smallest victims is to be displayed in Paris and appear on a billboard in New York.

“It’s the actual emptiness and the profound loss that you feel because of it,” she said. “I think it’s sort of opened up a wider debate really about what is actually happening.”