Zawyeh Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the group exhibition Elusive Territories, featuring a collection of works by prominent Palestinian artists. The exhibition brings together works that examine the relationship between exile, memory, and homeland, offering glimpses on personal and collective narratives that are shaped by dispossession, belonging and national identity.
Throughout the exhibition, elusive yet persistent glimpses of an absent homeland emerge from between the cracks of the abstraction, on the other hand, abstraction becomes a tool for piecing together fragments of Palestine, in an ongoing journey of identity formation. In exile, memory becomes a sanctuary, haunting but sometimes joyful reflecting being disconnected from home while carrying it within. In this exhibition, artists engage with home and exile seeking meaning amid loss and a daunting present. Some envision a free homeland, exploring its beauty, while others examine disorientation of shrinking natural spaces and expanding military structures within a continuous colonial reality. Woven throughout are the narratives of ordinary Palestinians resisting, exiled, or simply dream of an ordinary life.
The exhibition is organized at times of turmoil in the region, when millions of people are being dispossessed from their lands, and war wages by the colonial power on a large scale in the region. These works come to remind us, that the struggle for Palestine on the land continues, but also by artists and intellectuals each from their own position and location.
Participating artists are: Yazan Abu Salameh, Nabil Anani, Tayseer Barakat, Kamal Boullata, Benji Boyadgian, Samia Halaby, Khaled Hourani, Mohammed Joha, Bashir Makhoul, Sliman Mansour, Hosni Radwan, Rana Samara, Ruba Salameh, Samir Salameh, and Vera Tamari.
Press release from Zawyeh Gallery
Image: Samia Halaby. Evening in the Desert. 2019. Image courtesy of the artist and Zawyeh Gallery
