Art Dubai 2018 Archives

This Is How I Saw Gaza | Art Dubai 2018

/ Aissa Deebi (Art Fair) / Aissa Deebi, Art Dubai 2018, Art Fair, This Is How I Saw Gaza /

THIS IS HOW I SAW GAZA | ART DUBAI 2018

21 – 24 March, 2018
Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai

In This is How I saw Gaza, Palestinian artist Aissa Deebi investigates factors impacting his relationship with his homeland. The work consists of a series of paintings that probe the distance between exile and homeland using photographs of broadcasted news as a primary visual reference. Using ink on paper and oil on canvas, the mesmerizing works project a high degree of representational verisimilitude techniques.
Deebi – from Haifa and is currently Geneva-based – presents a body of work that centers around his exile and relationship with Gaza through popular newscasts. The artist who has been repeatedly refused permission to visit Gaza by the Israeli authorities, depicts explosions, destruction, ordnance, and ruins of buildings protruding from black smoke. This is not how he saw Gaza with his eyes but how he was forced to see it through television screens in exile – clinical and dehumanizing portrayals of repeated military attacks on an imprisoned and subjugated civilian population. Deebi\’s work is a stark reminder of the continued vulnerability of the Palestinian refugee population, seventy years after their dispossession.

Aissa Deebi is a Palestinian artist and scholar based in Geneva. His early work investigated the complexity of daily practices in post-1948 Palestine: Days like this (1997); Makkan (1998); My Dream House (1999); Nothing is New Only Forgotten (2000). Following this, Deebi tackled the theme of immigration and alienation, which culminated in his Ph.D. research, providing critical analysis of Diaspora as a creative space. In tandem with his scholarly work, Deebi produced a body of works that interrogate the complex phenomena of cultural-migration and Diaspora reality as experienced by an adult Palestinian-immigrant artist in post Sept 11 America: Killing Time (2004); Naked Heroes (2003); Dead Sweet (2004) and more recently Tal El Samak (2011).

: Aissa Deebi, Aircraft (2018), grisaille, glazing, oil and acrylic on canvas, 50 x 70 cm

: Aissa Deebi, Meteorology (2018), grisaille, glazing, oil and acrylic on canvas, 50 x 70 cm

: Aissa Deebi, Scotopia (2018), grisaille, glazing, oil and acrylic on canvas, 50 x 70 cm

: Aissa Deebi, Storm (2018), grisaille, glazing, oil and acrylic on canvas, 50 x 70 cm

: Aissa Deebi, Darken (2018), grisaille, glazing, oil and acrylic on canvas, 50 x 70 cm

: Aissa Deebi, Gale (2018), grisaille, glazing, oil and acrylic on canvas, 50 x 70 cm

: Aissa Deebi, Barracouta (2018), grisaille, glazing, oil and acrylic on canvas, 50 x 70 cm

Cactus Harvest | Art Dubai 2018

/ Samah Shihadi (Art Fair) / Art Dubai 2018, Art Fair, Cactus Harvest, Samah Shihadi /

CACTUS HARVEST | ART DUBAI 2018

21 – 24 March, 2018
Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai

Cactus Harvest by Samah Shihadi is a powerful collection of black and white drawings that explore the complex and often distant relationship with an elusive homeland, projecting a high degree of representational verisimilitude techniques. Samah Shihadi investigates factors impacting on her relationship with her ancestral land. The artist focuses on the annual cactus harvest on the land of her destroyed family village of Mi’ar which used to stand in the southern part of the Galilee, Palestine – before being erased in the Nakba of 1948.
Shihadi captures the annual rituals in which whole families would take part – regularly – before their expulsion in 1948. The infamous national Palestinian symbol of the cactus is a reminder of both dispossession and survival. Cactus plants used to demark plots of land plots belonging to village residents. These unique hedgerows are often the only visible reminder of the many hundreds of villages that were destroyed and ethnically cleansed in 1948. Shihadi’s paintings often depict the elderly of the village engaging in the harvest, while children innocently play in the emptiness of the land. Her tranquil and dreamlike scenes are often underpinned by painful memories and ongoing family trauma.

Samah has painted for as long as she can remember and having spent seven years studying art, she has emerged as a fine talent who has mastered the art of draughtsmanship.