Artbooth Gallery is pleased to present Heritage, Memory, and the Body, a group exhibition featuring the works of four distinguished Palestinian women artists: Rania Amoudi, Dina Matar, Fatima Abu Rumi and Marwa Alnajjar. Curated by Rula Dughman, founder of Bab edDeir Art Gallery, thisexhibition also stands as a tribute to the role of visionary curators in shaping spaces of memory and cultural continuity. On view from September 18 to October 31, 2025, at Artbooth Gallery Abu Dhabi, the exhibitionunfolds as a lyrical meditation on identity, displacement and the enduring language of the female form.
In a time when the voices of Arab women artists are becoming increasingly central to cultural discourse, these four artists offer a powerful and resonant alternative to static portrayals of femininity and nationhood. While their work is grounded in place, it resists the constraints of borders, following a shared instinct to reclaim the female figure as a vessel of memory, heritage and quiet resistance. Each painting, each motif, becomes more than a reflection of individual experience; it emerges as a fragment of collective history, layered and alive.
Rania Amoudi’s art is born of introspection, shaped by a childhood marked by constant movement and thelingering shadows of political unrest. Her interiors, rich with pattern, detail and stillness, become sanctuaries of memory where the domestic world is reimagined as a sacred space. In contrast, Dina Matar’s canvases seem to radiate outward. Through vibrant colors and abstractions inspired by traditional embroidery, she celebrates a sense of rootedness drawn from the dresses once worn by her grandmother in Gaza. Her work, luminous and generous, serves not only as tributes to her homeland but also as offerings of hope and healing.
Fatima Abu Rumi paints with the weight of inheritance. Grounded in the Galilee, her realist- expressionistapproach fuses architectural motifs, calligraphy and traditional textile patterns to explore what it means tocarry both history and modernity within a single body. Her women are composed of centuries; they look out from the canvas with dignity, clarity and strength. Meanwhile, Marwa Alnajjar’s portraits shimmer with stillness. Gilded in silver and gold, her figures seem suspended in time, caught between tenderness and trauma, their fragility imbued with grace. Inspired by actual archival photographs from pre-1948 Yafa, a city once renowned for its flourishing citrus groves and the legendary Jaffa orange, her depictions of women, men and families gathering fruit become vessels of remembrance. In her work, personal memory and collective history converge, offering quiet scenes that invite both reverence and reflection.
Together, these artists form a powerful chorus, each voice distinct, yet harmoniSing in their shared pursuit: to render visible the unseen layers of the self, of womanhood, of Palestine. Their works transcend aesthetics; they are testaments, heirlooms and quiet revolutions.
At Artbooth Gallery, we are proud to present Heritage, Memory, and the Body as an invitation to encounter art not merely as image, but as inheritance, something to witness, to hold, and perhaps, to carry forward.
Press release from Artbooth Gallery
Image: Marwa Najjar. The Fence. 2025. Oil and gold leaf on canvas. 110 x 90 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Artbooth Gallery
