As the commercial machinery of Frieze week reached full speed, a small London gallery chose a different register. Tramps has opened An Exhibition as Record, a non-selling exhibition devoted to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, running until 12 December. The gallery's founder, Parinaz Mogadassi, said she deliberately scheduled the show for the week when the art world's audience in London is at its largest and most concentrated, arguing that the community should at minimum bear witness to what is unfolding.

The exhibition is built around four elements. One is a video compiling footage of a mock press conference staged by children outside al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on 7 November 2023. Broadcast by Al Jazeera, the footage shows around 20 children gathered in the hospital grounds, with a boy of about ten acting as spokesperson and appealing for protection. Another pairing sets Lucio Fontana's 1941 sculpture of a reclining figure, Nudo femminile sdraiato, in front of a photograph printed on a silver mirror. The image, taken in 2023 by Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem, shows the Palestinian woman Inas Abu Maamar cradling her dead five-year-old niece Saly.

The final room holds Short-Term, But Long-Term (2025), a photographic installation by Federico Vespignani comprising 20 images drawn from dating apps that show profiles of Israeli soldiers serving in Gaza. Their faces are redacted; the men had photographed themselves inside homes and at sites destroyed during the conflict. More than 300 of the profile pictures were initially published by the artist last year.

The exhibition arrives against a grim statistical backdrop. Since the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, in which more than 1,200 Israelis were killed and more than 250 people taken hostage, nearly 73,000 Palestinians are estimated to have been killed in Gaza, according to data published by the World Health Organization in coordination with the Palestinian Ministry of Health. By placing the material in a commercial gallery during the year's busiest market week, the show asks how far the art world is prepared to go in turning its gaze outward.