PITTSBURGH, UNITED STATES — The murals in my Silent Victims campaign, which ran from 2017 to 2018 in Sana’a, each speak to a different wound carved into Yemen by years of war. I created this mural during the severe famine in the governorate of Hodeidah, when tens of thousands of Yemeni children under the age of five were dying “entirely preventable” deaths across our country.
It shows a mother holding her desperately malnourished child — a scene that became heartbreakingly common at the time. The mother’s shadowed figure represents the countless unnamed women who carried their children through hunger, displacement, and silence, while the child’s fragile body reflects the cruelty of starvation.
What makes this piece even more tragic is that the real Yemeni child whose photo inspired my mural passed away just two hours after the picture was taken. His death became, for me, a symbol of how war consumes the most innocent lives first.
This mural carries his memory, but it also reflects the wider suffering in Hodeidah and Yemen today — and how, even after more than 10 years of war, the humanitarian crisis continues to worsen day after day.
Haifa Subay is a Yemeni visual artist and muralist based in Pittsburgh. “Child of Bones” is one of 13 murals from her Silent Victims series, alongside “War Rhythm,” “Peace Finder,” and “Just a Leg.” From 2012 to 2020, she transformed Yemen’s public walls into spaces of healing and collective reflection through her widely recognized mural campaigns on such themes as enforced disappearances, child soldier recruitment, landmine victims, domestic violence, attacks on schools and archaeological sites, and the psychological impact of conflict on children. Her visual storytelling has received the Prince Claus Seed Award and a fellowship with the Artist Protection Fund at the University of Pittsburgh through the PiNTS Program (Pittsburgh Network for Threatened Scholars). Currently, Haifa is developing new bodies of artistic work that explore identity, resilience, memory, and Arabic calligraphy.
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