🍉 The “Bateekha Project” was a simple idea that grew out of a desire to take action in a meaningful way through art. A watermelon purchased in downtown Cairo sold, again and again, at a Kensington auction on Friday night, raising more than GBP 249k in auction sales, pledges, and donations for the grassroots group Healing for Gaza.

The founder of the initiative, Hedayat Taymour, came up with the idea about a year ago. A London-based sculptor, interior architect, and designer, Taymour is also the co-founder of Egyptian furniture brand Eklego. She had recently been exhibiting large fiberglass sculptures and decided to take a watermelon to one of the workshops she works with in Cairo’s El Darb district. Within a week, the watermelon was turned into a mold. From that single cast came 28 fiberglass watermelons, each handed as a blank canvas to a different artist. The artists returned them as their distinct interpretations of the Palestinian experience. The 28 works of art were shown at Gallery 1957 on Hyde Park Gate and auctioned on 18 September.

Joining forces with curator and long-time friend and collaborator Taya Elzayadi, Taymour was able to reach a network of international artists. They included Ghada Amer, Rana Begum, Peter Kennard, Gabby Samara, Malak Mattar, Huda Lutfi, Nada Mobarak, Mohamed Abla, and Caroline Burraway. “It was incredible seeing all the different interpretations. One of the artists from Mexico took the bateekha that we sent him, 3D-printed it, and made an olive branch out of the watermelon,” says Taymour.

“Taya was exactly the right person to reach out to for this,” Taymour tells EnterpriseAM. “She rolled up her sleeves and got to work, along with our other three co-founders, Ghada Sousou, Dima Fakhry, and Malak Fouad, who had exactly the same attitude. Each one of us brought in different areas of expertise: finance, media, and curation. We all wanted to contribute and make a difference, but none of us realized it would grow this big,” says Taymour.

The logistics of shipping 28 fiberglass watermelons from Egypt to countries around the world and then getting them all back to London in one piece wasn’t easy. “There was a lot of improvisation involved,” Elzayadi and Taymour tell us. “The energy was so beautiful because the minute you mentioned that this is something that we're doing for Palestine, no one hesitated to help. All of the services were given to us at cost or even without a fee,” says Elzayadi.

The fruit delivers a strong message. In 1980, the Israeli army shut down an exhibition in Ramallah featuring Sliman Mansour and two other Palestinian artists: Nabil Anani and Essam Badr. They were forbidden to paint anything using the colors of the Palestinian flag (red, green, black, and white). When asked if they could paint a flower using those colors, the response was, “Even if you paint a watermelon, it will be confiscated.” Thus, the symbol of defiance was born.

Mansour was initially set to create his own watermelon for the auction. “Sadly, he tried but was too ill to continue,” Taymour tells us. “He was with us in spirit.” He died on 24 August, aged 79, but the auction opened with a tribute from Elzayadi to his memory.

Because the founders of Bateekha had committed 100% of the auction proceeds to Healing for Gaza, the running pre-auction costs were covered separately by donors. Gallery 1957’s owner Marwan Zakhem — whose spaces in Accra and London are typically given over to artists from West Africa and its diaspora — gave the space pro bono and paid for the opening reception. In a climate where people “are afraid of the word Palestine, that really meant something,” Taymour says.

All 28 works were open to online bidding before the live auction. The opening reception on 15 September was, by the gallery’s own account, its best-attended ever, with more than 100 people spilling onto the street, “a completely mixed crowd from all over the world,” explains Taymour, including a number of Jewish guests. Friday’s live auction was smaller by design, kept to around 70 and skewed to collectors so the bidding could do its work. Among those who attended was American scholar and activist Norman Finkelstein, known for his critiques of Zionism.

The money goes somewhere for the long term. The founders picked Healing for Gaza for its focus on the mental trauma of children and families; it runs on more than 70 doctors and clinicians, and they know its principles. “This is long-term; it’s an endless project,” Elzayadi says, calling the damage to “generation after generation” among the war’s least reversible effects.

The amount of money raised is just one part of the mission. Taymour tells us that the awareness that’s being created by choosing a gallery in London as the venue is extremely important. “We live in a climate now where everybody’s being censored, so the fact that we are able to do something like this is just hopeful,” says Elzayadi.

British artist Caroline Burraway’s watermelon never reached the gallery wall. Her watermelon, “Silence for Gaza,” which depicts a family that lost a son, has been shortlisted for the prestigious Trinity Buoy Drawing Prize 2026 and will go on tour in the UK for three months. “Spreading that message is part of the success of this project,” Taymour says. “It’s not just about auctioning it off.”

What comes next? Taymour and Elzayadi would both like to institutionalize Bateekha — and perhaps create a Cairo edition. “We have to find a way,” says Taymour, who is currently focusing on her sculpture while pursuing projects in London and Cairo. Elzayadi, who has shifted from running a gallery to curating, says that Bateekha represents a benchmark: “It’s the most rewarding project I’ve ever worked on.”