Abu Dhabi Art 2025

Zawyeh Gallery is presenting works by the New Visions group, consisting of artists Sliman Mansour, Nabil Anani, Tayseer Barakat, and Vera Tamari. The New Visions group was established during the First Palestinian Intifada in 1989, a period when everything echoed a call for freedom. The New Visions artists revisit this innovative period, during which they joined the boycott campaign of the First Intifada, boycotting art supplies from Israeli sources. Instead, they turned to using local materials such as untreated goat leather, mud, henna, wood, straw, and other natural mediums. This approach marked a milestone in their artistic journeys, taking them into a new phase.

During the “New Vision” era, which lasted over a decade, the artists transitioned from directly symbolizing the land they cherish in their works to producing art made from the very natural materials of the land. The new art production for Abu Dhabi Art consists of works created in a similar style and with similar materials, but from a new perspective.

Nabil Anani returns to using untreated goat leather as canvas, focusing on the Palestinian cultural landscape. The new series ‘Exit into the Light’ draws inspiration from his first artwork produced in 1989 and shares its title with his Arabic memoir, ‘Exit into the Light’. This series reflects Anani’s deep connection to the land, featuring delicate figures of people who blend seamlessly with the natural materials they are made of. Through his work, Anani continues to explore the relationship between medium and identity, presenting a series that honors the rural life of the Palestinian people and their attachment to their land.

Sliman Mansour focuses on using straw and mud in his delicate works, blending the elements of the earth with the symbols that defined his early career, emphasizing Palestinian identity and traditions. In this series, he illustrates patterns of embroidery in square compositions that resemble the colorful front part of the traditional Palestinian dress (thobe). Crafted from colored straw and clay, these pieces are beautifully detailed, reflecting the texture and appearance of embroidery stitches.

Alive within a Tormented Landscape, Vera Tamari created this series of ceramic tiles as a reflection on the Palestinian landscape, which continues to be afflicted by colonization and war. The olive tree, cactus, and seeds represent three botanical groups among the hundreds of living species in Palestine’s natural environment that are daily threatened, uprooted, burnt, and carelessly destroyed. In these tiles, the agonized landscape is shrouded in white, yet through an invisible force, the deeply rooted olives, cacti, and seeds defy extinction, to again flourishing and finding rebirth in their ancestral habitat.

Lastly, Tayseer Barakat’s wooden works remind us of early cave drawings. Animals, abstract figures, and alphabet-like symbols are all executed using wood-burning tools. Barakat excels in using elements and figures inspired by past civilizations in the region. His works juxtapose ancient symbols with recent memories, highlighting the enduring presence of the past. He conveys the depth of the region’s diversity and stresses that the current people of the land are part of a long civilization that dates back to ancient history.