Zawyeh Gallery introduces three of the most prominent artists in Palestine in its participation this year in Paris Contemporary Art Show: Nabil Anani, Tayseer Barakat and Vera Tamari. The artworks of the three Palestinian artists echo issues connecting to nature in their contexts; issues that have been a central stage in the day to day life in Palestine and the region.

The land, is a source of inspiration for Nabil Anani, who normally focuses on exploring the Palestinian landscape and life in Palestinian villages. This time, his project “Troubled Land” explores a beautiful utopian nature in the Palestinian landscape in contrary to the reality that is full of military interruptions of the scenery. From behind fences, checkpoints, bypass roads, settlements, the separation wall and the closed military zones, its has become extremely difficult for Palestinians to access their landscape for cultivation let alone for the enjoyment of natural scenery. Yet, Anani chooses to ignore all such issues, and focus on different cheer elements of beauty such as the colorful trees that appear like ornaments in an embroidered traditional dress of nature. Yet, the shadows of vanishing faces and houses that appear sometime in the background remain a reminder of a lost connection between the Palestinians and their scenic landscape that has been disappearing gradually as a result of occupation.

On the other hand, Tayseer Barakat’s body of work “Shoreless Sea” ward off from discussing the locale and manifests as an account on the refugee’s mayhem journeys through the Mediterranean Sea, a subject of a strong relevance to the artist’s life. Barakat is a refugee himself who lived a good part of his life as a child by the Mediterranean shores of Gaza and as a university student by the Mediterranean shores of Alexandria. Nonetheless, this same sea that he grew up next to, transformed in recent years to become a beast that swallows fellow refugees in their desperate trips in search for new decent lives in Europe. As if it withdrew its shores and hid them away, leaving flights of refugees to their gloomy fate. His artworks depict a constantly wavy monsters, which seems as if breathing heavily from beneath the boats through the lungs of hundreds of refugees who lost their lives under the water in their journeys to “shoreless” Europe.

Vera Tamari investigates the landscape through her works, not via clay – her favorite medium – but through gouache. Her artworks take a new turn as she draws the Palestinian hills in abstraction, using primitive lines and shapes presenting a dreamy atmosphere of hills, houses and trees.