Zawyeh Gallery
Art Dubai 2018

Zawyeh Gallery presents a duo exhibition at Art Dubai exploring dispossession and exile

Ramallah- : Zawyeh Gallery is pleased to present a duo exhibition of new artworks featuring Palestinian artists Samah Shihadi and Aissa Deebi in Art Dubai (21 to 24 March). The exhibition (Booth E9) presents powerful black and white paintings exploring distant relationship with an elusive homeland.
Both artists explore what keeps them away from home using charcoal on paper and oil on canvas deploying high degree of representational verisimilitude techniques. The details that characterizes their works start with an observation of the boundaries that prevent them from making the journey back home. Shihadi is mainly focused on “Cactus Harvest” on the land of her destroyed village Mi’ar which used to stand in the southern part of the Galilee before being erased in the Nakba of 1948, while Deebi’s work consists of a series of paintings titled “This is How I saw Gaza” that probe the distance between exile and homeland using photographs of broadcasted news as a primary visual reference.

In her charcoal artworks Shihadi tries to capture cactus harvest rituals in which the whole family would have taken part in before 1948. The well known symbol of Palestinian dispossession is normally found on the territorial borders between peasants’ lands. The cactus has become a trace indicating the destroyed Palestinian towns and villages. The paintings depict the elderly of the village engaging in the cactus harvest, while the emptiness of the lands in the background strikes harshly reminding that the village was erased and its people were dispossessed. What looks like reality is in fact an imagined dream.

On the other hand, Deebi, originally from Haifa, presents a body of work that spans around his exile and relationship with Gaza through the news. Deebi who was refused a permit to enter Gaza in the past, was never allowed into Gaza. In his paintings explosions, military helicopters and ruins of buildings emerge from intense black clouds of smoke. This is not how he saw Gaza with his bear eyes but how he was forced to see it through the television screens in his exile. The same as they are absent from the media images, people of Gaza are also absent from Deebi’s works. His work stresses on the absence of the voice of Palestinians and the people of Gaza in particular in the public domain.

Ziad Anani, Director of Zawyeh Gallery, which is participating for third time in Art Dubai this year, hopes that their participation will open the door in front of contemporary and emerging Palestinian artists to promote their works amongst a wide variety of audience who visit Art Dubai on annual basis.

For further information, please contact:

Ziad Anani
Director
Zawyeh Gallery
7A Al Zahra St. Ramallah, Palestine
Tel: +970 2 2426486
Mob: +970 597 994997
www.zawyeh.net