Hosni Radwan

/ Hosni Radwan (Artist) / Artist, Hosni Radwan /

Artist Biography

Hosni Radwan was born in Baghdad in 1955. He studied fine arts at the University of Baghdad specializing in graphics. He held a number of solo exhibitions in Iraq, Lebanon, Cyprus, Japan and Palestine. Radwan took part in international biennales including those of Berlin, Cairo and Sharja. He left Baghdad in 1979 and headed to Beirut where he worked in graphic design and journalism while continuing to draw and paint using his talents to express his position vis-à-vis the cause of his people. Radwan’s works have special characteristics as they do not include realistic or political imitations. He seeks to photograph the external world in all of its spaces and its various states and situations, using techniques that go beyond colour and different materials, thus forming a world of his own. Details of the scenes in Baghdad have played a major role in his artistic experience, inspiring his work that has spanned over 25 years of ongoing production. He mixes acrylics with sand, wood and paper and other visible and tangible objects, creating a kind of mounds that surround his works and their special, abstract world. Radwan works at several levels using a mixture of acrylics and sand to open before us a mobile and dismantled world that resembles a sustainable space with all of its different components, reactions and subjective chaos. In the works in which he utilizes ink and watercolors on paper, he generates a strong feeling of music and sophism, giving a kind of soul to the paper.

He has exhibited widely and his solo shows have been held in cities including Tunis (1993); Tokyo (1985); Nicosia (1983); Ramallah (2003 ,2002 ,1997); Baghdad (2001) and Kuwait (2008).

Hosni Radwan Palestinian Artist Hosni Radwan Palestinian Artist

Available Works

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #10, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 140 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #8, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 140 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #13, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 140 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #23, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 40 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #5, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 140 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #24, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #25, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #9, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 140 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #26, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #20, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 40 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #17, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 60 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #19, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 80 x 70 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #16, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 95 x 56 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #4, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 130 x 130 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #11, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 40 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #2, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 130 x 130 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #1, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 140 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #3, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 140 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #15, 2017, mixed media on canvas, 67 x 67 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #22, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 35 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Church of Nativity, Bethlehem, 2018 Charcoal and gold leaf on canvas, 112.5 × 106.5 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Jerusalem #6, 2018 Acrylic on canvas, 102 × 113 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Pomegranate Kiss , 2017 Acrylic on canvas, 100 × 100 cm

Art Fairs and Exhibitions featuring Hosni Radwan

Zawyeh at Galleries at MAS Abu Dhabi 2019

April 8 – June 8, 2019
Booth A2, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi

Jerusalem: 51 Years of Occupation

April 21 – June 14, 2018
Zawyeh Gallery

Out of Place by Hosni Radwan

December 9, 2017 – January 11, 2018
Zawyeh Gallery

Crossroads Collective

January 14 – February 4, 2016
Zawyeh Gallery

Fragments by Hosni Radwan

March 21 – April 2, 2015
Zawyeh Gallery

Colors of Life

October 25 – November 15, 2014
Zawyeh Gallery

Further Information:

Works available by Hosni Radwan via Artsy
For inquiries and questions contact us

Zawyeh at Galleries at MAS Abu Dhabi 2019

/ Hosni Radwan (Art Fair), Nabil Anani (Art Fair), Rafat Asad (Art Fair), Rana Samara (Art Fair), Tayseer Barakat (Art Fair), Vera Tamari (Art Fair) / Abu Dhabi 2019, Art Fair, Galleries at MAS, Hosni Radwan, Nabil Anani, Rana Samara, Tayseer Barakat, Vera Tamari /

April 8 – June 8, 2019
Booth A2, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi

Zawyeh Gallery is participating at the 2019 Galleries at MAS, Abu Dhabi, featuring works by Nabil Anani, Rafat Asad, Tayseer Barakat, Hosni Radwan, Rana Samara, and Vera Tamari.

Zawyeh Gallery’s art fair selection captures diverse works by emerging and established artists from Palestine and the diaspora, as the only Palestinian Gallery represented at the art fair. These works are the personal aesthetic elucidations of individual artists whose lives are intertwined by their collective memory and experiences as Palestinian artists enduring similar fates relating to disenfranchisement and loss.

The following are biographical information on the participating artists:

Nabil Anani (b.1943, Latroun, Palestine) is one of the most prominent Palestinian artists working today. He is considered by many as a key founder of the contemporary Palestinian art movement.
Tayseer Barakat was born in Gaza in 1959 and completed his arts education in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1983. After completing his studies, he moved to Ramallah where he has since based – both teaching and creating art.
Hosni Radwan was born in Baghdad in 1955. He studied fine arts at the University of Baghdad specializing in graphics. He held a number of solo exhibitions in Iraq, Lebanon, Cyprus, Japan and Palestine.
Vera Tamari was born in Jerusalem in 1945. She received a B.A. in fine arts in 1966 from the Beirut College for Women (now the Lebanese American University) in Lebanon.
Shada Safadi is a visual artist born in Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights. She finished a two-year-class in painting and etching at Adham Ismail Institute in Damascus in 2003, before she joined the department of painting at Damascus University, in which she graduated from with a degree in fine arts in 2005

Galleries at MAS Palestinian Art Galleries at MAS Palestinian Art

: Tayseer Barakat, The Dance, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 41 x 47 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #15, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 67 x 67 cm

: Vera Tamari, Like in a Dream, 2014, watercolour on paper, 30 x 40 cm

: Rafat Asad, Marj Ibn Amer #12, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 80 x 90 cm

: Nabil Anani, Kobar, 2013, mixed media on paper, 65 x 50 cm

: Shada Safadi, Limitless, 2018, etching, monotype, 35 x 35 cm

Artists featured in this exhibition

Nabil Anani

Tayseer Barakat

Hosni Radwan

Vera Tamari

Shada Safadi

Further inforamtion:

Works available via Artsy
For inquires and questions contact us

Jerusalem: 51 Years of Occupation

/ Fouad Agbaria (Exhibition), Hosni Radwan (Exhibition), Nabil Anani (Exhibition), Osama Said (Exhibition), Sliman Mansour (Exhibition) / Exhibition, Fouad Agbaria, Hosni Radwan, Jerusalem: 51 Years of Occupation, Nabil Anani, Osama Said, Sliman Mansour /

April 21 – June 14, 2018
Zawyeh Gallery

The overwhelming significance of the physicality of Jerusalem as a national symbol permeates many of the artworks. The iconic representation of the Dome of the Rock comes to the fore as some artists celebrate the city via exceptionally colourful works especially those by Fouad Agbaria, Ibrahim Nobani, Osama Said, Dina Mattar, the late Issam Bader and to an extent Ahed Izhiman. Conversely, a strong sense of melancholy and grief overshadows the charcoal works of Nabil Anani, Hosni Radwan and the photorealism painting of Adam Shehada were the city loses its colour. Similarly, Sliman Mansour calls in his artwork upon the ghosts of the past to haunt the city’s present time. Khaled Hourani presents a man struggling to hang up a sign of Jerusalem written in Arabic. The Wall in Tayseer Barakat and Mohammad Joulani’s artworks is a prominent feature while Fayez Sirsawi presents a diary of students’ daily life under occupation.

The exhibition also showcases contemporary artists’ perspectives on the socio-political issues surrounding the city’s ongoing occupation. The racial discrimination practices towards Palestinians by the Israeli regime is the subject of Yazan Khalili’s artwork, while Benji Boyadgian’s work is a journey in time in the midst of the complex and fragmented Palestinian landscape of the 21th century “Mega Jerusalem”. Rana Samara’s work focuses on the sights of demolished homes highlighting Israel’s ilegal policy of house demolitions and ethnic cleansing. Rehab Nazzal’s photography work focuses on demonstrations against the Israeli regime’s policies in the city through an ironic scene that reveals from a distance a masked demonstrator taking a rest amid a cloud of intensive smoke. Michael Hallaq on the other hand explores touristic objects that can be found abundantly at souvenir shops around the city, capturing a different layer of “the holy” city that remains popular with tourists even though it is detached from reality. Rawan Khaliliyeh’s artwork is an exploration of the aesthetics of old wooden slabs that are used in building sites, which are scarce in the eastern part of the city due to building restrictions. Vervara Razak attempts at combining traditional symbols presented in the transformation of a Knafeh triangular piece into a traditionally embroidered cushion sold in souvenir shops.

Adam Shehada

Adam Shehada was born in Gaza in 1991. A self taught hyper-realistic artist, his work carries alot of emotions which stems from his ongoing suffering due to the Israeli occupation.

Shehada considers practice and patience as key attitudes in refining artist’s skills. He works with pencil and charcoal because he formed a strong “love bond” with this medium when he was a child. Even though he is able to produce astonishingly realistic works, he believes that he has not yet discovered his full potential with this simple tool.

Shehada has been invited to exhibit his first debut collection titled Inextinguishable Suns in Britain’s prestigious House of Parliament, London’s Open Ealing Gallery, and other locations. But unfortunately, he has not been able to find a sponsor for his trip to accompany his works, and thus cannot realize one of his most important dreams: to see with his own eyes the world beyond Gaza.

Benji Boyadgian

Benji Boyadgian (FI/PS) born 1983, Jerusalem. Studied architecture at ENSAPLV School of Architecture (L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris La Villette), specializing in urban sociology in post-conflict areas.

Boyadgian works on research-based projects that explore themes revolving around perception, heritage, territory, architecture and landscape. He works with multiple mediums, spacial installations, and employs painting and drawing as his primary tools for conveying his subject matter.

His recent exhibition include; 2017: Sharjah Biennial 13 Offsite: Shifting Ground, Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah; Armenia Standart: Mount Anlalogue, Gyumri; Around About: Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah; AQUA, Contemporary Artists and Water Issues, Chateau de Penthes, Geneva; The Discord, Al Ma’mal and Anadeil Gallery, Jerusalem; 2016: Traces, Art Rooms, Kyrenia; The Jerusalem Show VIII: ‘Before and After Origins’, Al Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem; De lova de oss en skola, de lovade en Simhall, Skånes konstförening, Lund ; Lines of passage (in media res), the Municipal Art Gallery, Lesvos; 2015: Line, Art Rooms, Kyrenia; Stepping over the Borders, European Mediterranean Art Association (EMMA), Nicosia; Shared Religious Places, Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations (MuCEM), Marseille; 2014: The Jerusalem Show VIII: ‘Fractures’, Al Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem; and Curated-By: Spinning On An Axis, Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art, Vienna.

BENJI BOYADGIAN, *Ruin, Wad el Shami*, 2014, ink on paper, 55 x 75 cm

Boyadgian attended the Young Artists Residency Program of Confrontation Through Art Project, organized by EMAA and Rooftop Theatre Group, Nicosia; Grant holder, IASPIS, Stockholm; He was been awarded the Ismail Shammout Prize (2015) in Palestine.

Boyadgian lives and works in Jerusalem.

Hosni Radwan

He has exhibited widely and his solo shows have been held in cities including Tunis (1993); Tokyo (1985); Nicosia (1983); Ramallah (2003 ,2002 ,1997, 2017); Baghdad (2001) and Kuwait (2008). Radwan currently lives and works in Ramallah.

Nabil Anani

Nabil Anani (b.1943, Latroun, Palestine) is one of the most prominent Palestinian artists working today. He is considered by many as a key founder of the contemporary Palestinian art movement.

On graduating in Fine Art from Alexandra University, Egypt [in 1969], Anani returned to his native Palestine and began a fruitful career as an artist and a teacher trainer at the UN training college in Ramallah. Anani held his first exhibition in Jerusalem in 1972 and has since exhibited widely in Europe, North America, the Middle East, North Africa and Japan – both as an individual artist and with groups of his Palestinian contemporaries.

Anani is a multi-talented artist, for he is a painter, a ceramicist and a sculptor. He pioneered the use of local media such as leather, henna, natural dyes, Papier-mâché, wood, beads and copper. Over the past four decades, Anani has built an impressive catalogue of outstanding, innovative and unique art.

Anani was awarded (by Yasser Arafat) the first Palestinian National Prize for Visual Art in 1997 and became the head of the League of Palestinian Artists in 1998. On retiring from his teaching post in 2003, Anani has dedicated much of his time to voluntary pas- times, leading on the League’s activities and playing a key role in the establishment of the first International Academy of Fine Art in Palestine – with the assistance of the University of Oslo and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Sliman Mansour

Born in 1947, Birzeit, Palestine, Sliman Mansour studied fine art at the Bezalel Art Academy in Jerusalem. He has held solo exhibitions in Ramallah, New York, Sharjah, Cairo, Gaza and Stavanger, Norway. His group exhibitions include Museum of Oriental Art, Moscow (1980), Palestinian Spring, Al-Hakawati Theatre, Jerusalem, 1985; New Visions, Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman, 1991; Made in Palestine, Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, Texas, 2003; and Contemporary Graphic Art in the Arab World, Nabad Gallery, Amman, 2010. In 1998 he received the Palestine Prize for the Visual Arts at the Cairo Biennial. Sliman Mansour draws inspiration from the subject of the olive tree, and has focused on the theme of ‘land’ since 1970. His recent work is centred on the individual figure to convey the ‘different states of exhausting anticipation or loss,’ resulting from his experience of living under the occupation.

Michael Halak

Michael Halak was born in 1975 in Fassuta village (Upper Galilee). He currently lives and works in Haifa. In 1999-2002 he studied Fine Art at Haifa University. In 2005 he won a residence scholarship at the Florence Academy of Art in Italy. In 2007-2009 he studied M.F.A at Haifa University. Halak is a realistic painter whose works focus on classical subjects such as portraits, landscapes and still lifes with a contemporary twist. He has had solo shows at Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, Noga Gallery in Tel-Aviv and Haifa University Art Gallery. He also exhibited in many group shows such as Haifa Museum, Herzelia Museum and other galleries in the Middle East, Europe and the United States.

Halak won several awards including: Israeli Ministry of Culture and sports for contemporary artist (2015), The Rappaport prize for a young painter (2011), the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sports Award for young artists (2010), and the Pais Culture Council support in Exhibition (2012-2016).

NABIL ANANI, Faces of Jerusalem, 2018, charcoal on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

Michael Halak’s paintings belong to the Western tradition of realist; illusory painting that goes back hundreds of years. The drama and turmoil in his works are given contemporary expression and reflect his connection to this particular place and time. Halak’s paintings address the immediate reality that surrounds him by means of direct observation or photographs. The illusion of reality represented on canvas is seductively beautiful and perfect, yet it is simultaneously revealed to carry a disturbing charge, which is related to states of disruption and disintegration.

His works charged with the central tension that shapes both his life and his work; the question of the connection between man and place, and related concerns regarding presence and absence, identification and dis-identification, witnessing and silencing, memory and intentionally imposed oblivion.

Ibrahim Nubani

Ibrahim Nubani was born in Acre (1961); he studied art at Bezalel, the Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. He lives and works in the village of Maher in the Galilee. Nubani is perceived as a controversial artist, who difies the colonialist Israeli system. His fa- ther grew up in Haifa, and after the Nakba was forced to abandon his home for Acre and settle there.

In Nubani’s creations, abstraction is not only a “condensation”, its also an attempt to distance himself from the approach of a re- port or of documentation in order to reach the heart of an idea or its essence, and to express soulful and spiritual energy, which is the artistic parallel to freedom and liberation. Nubani has held a number of solo and group exhibitions locally and internationally.

Fouad Agbaria

Born in the village of Musmus near Umm El Fahm in 1981, Fouad Agbaria is one of the most prominent young Palestinian artists working today. Agbaria attained a bachelor’s degree from Bezalel Academy, Jerusalem in 2004 and a master’s degree from Haifa University in 2014.

Since completing his undergraduate degree, Agbaria has painted prolifically often experimenting with different styles, techniques and media including charcoal, oil, acrylic and lithography. His catalogue of work to date has dealt with many themes associated with the Palestinian narrative, identity and memory. He has participated in over 20 group exhibitions and has held four solo shows. Agbaria lives and works in Um Al-Fahem.

Khaled Hourani

IBRAHIM NUBANI, Jerusalem in Danger, 2018, mixed media on cardboard, 70 x 100 cm

Khaled Hourani (b. Hebron, 1965) is a Palestinian artist, curator, and art critic. He is the initiator of the project Picasso in Palestine. He attained a BA in History from Hebron University and was awarded the title of Cultural Management Trainer by Al Mawred Cul- ture Resource and the European Cultural Foundation (Egypt). He has had several solo exhibitions locally and internationally and participates frequently in group exhibitions. Hourani has curated and organized several exhibitions such as The Young Artist of the Year Award for the years 2000 and 2002 for the A.M. Qattan Foundation, Ramallah. He was the curator of the Palestinian pavilion for Sao Paolo Biennale, Brazil and the 21st Alexandria Biennale, Egypt. He writes critically in the field of art and is an active member and founder of artistic and administrative boards in a number of cultural and art institutions. Hourani was the Art Director of the International Academy of Art Palestine (2007-2010). He currently lives and works in Ramallah.

Issam Bader

Issam Bader was born in 1948 in Hebron. He graduated from the Baghdad Fine Arts Academy, and received his Master’s in Ceramics from the Tbilisi Academy of Fine Arts in Georgia. He has held 10 personal exhibitions and participated in a number of group exhi- bitions in Palestine, Cairo, and Tokyo. In 1979, he founded the first Gallery in Ramallah (Gallery 79) which was a center of cultural activities and a showcase of Palestinian art in the early 80’s till it was closed down by the Israeli military authorities. Issam Bader passed away in November 2003 in Ramallah.

Rehab Nazzal

Rehab Nazzal is a Palestinian-born multidisciplinary artist based in Canada and Palestine. Her video, photography and sound works deal with violence of settler colonialism. Nazzal’s work has been shown in Canada, Palestine, and internationally in both group and solo exhibitions, including Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, CONTACT Photography Festival, Toronto Images Festival, A Space Gallery, Toronto; Karsh-Masson Art Gallery, Ottawa; AXNEO 7, Quebec; McIntosh Art Gallery, London; Toronto-Palestine Film Festi- val; United Art Society, Alberta; Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah; Art Gallery of Mississauga; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Spanish Institute of Art, and the International Durzfilmtage Oberhausen, Germany.

Nazzal holds a PhD in Art and Visual Culture from Western University in London, Ontario, an MFA from Ryerson University in Toronto, a BFA from the University of Ottawa, and a BA in Economics from Damascus University in Syria. She is a recipient of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SHRC) doctoral award, Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS), Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Art Council, and City of Ottawa. She has received awards from Ottawa University, Ryerson University and University of Western Ontario.

Ahed Izhiman

Ahed Izhiman is an artist who was born in Jerusalem in 1980. Ahed has worked as a photography consultant and freelance photog- rapher for the past ten years. Since 2001, he has contributed to community organizations as a young artist, art lecturer and fine art professional trainer, and is one of the co-founders of Art Lab, the first office-sharing project for artists in Jerusalem. His works have been widely presented in national and international exhibitions. Izhiman currently lives and works in Jerusalem.

Mohammad Joulani

Mohammad Joulani (b. 1983, Jerusalem) earned a Bachelors degree in Fine Arts from Al Quds University in 2009 where he taught visual art between 2011 and 2013.

Joulani received the Higher Education Award in 2007 and the 2nd prize for the Ismail Shammout Fine Arts Award, 2016. He is one of the founding members of the Visual Artists Club in Jerusalem.

Joulani participated in his first solo exhibition; Regular Day, Open gallery 3rd Edition at the Al Hoash Art Court in Jerusalem, Occu- pied Palestine (2016). He also participated in many local and international group exhibitions, including; Reviewing Jerusalem #2 Return, Qalandiya International 3rd edition, Al Hoash Art Court, Jerusalem, Occupied Palestine (2016); Sumoud, Ismail Shammout Award in Fine Arts, Diyar consortium, Bethlehem, Palestine (2016); Colors of Life, Zawyeh gallery, Ramallah, Palestine, (2014); Fes International Festival for Arts in Morocco (2013); Frau Museum, Bonn Germany (2013); Room of Hope, Diyar Consortium, United States (2011); and other participations in Egypt, Malaysia, Italy and the Netherlands.

Rawan Khalilieh

Rawan Khalilieh (b. 1991, Nazareth) is a Palestinian artist and an art graduate from Haifa University (2016). Khalilieh participated in a number of workshops in a variety of cultural fields in addition to working for local institutions. She was shortlisted for Ismail Shammout Annual Award organized by Dar Al Kalimeh University in Bethlehem and has won the first prize (2018).

Yazan Khalili

Yazan Khalili, born in 1981, lives and works in and out of Palestine. He received a BA from Birzeit University, an MA from the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, and an MFA from the Sandberg Institute. He was co-founder of Zan Design Studio and the winner of Extract V Young Art Prize 2015. Solo shows include No one Saw the Colors at Gl Strand, Copenhagen, On the Other Side of the Law at Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai, On Love and Other Landscapes at Mumbai Art Room, Mumbai, and Imane Fares Gallery, Paris, The Aliens at Transit Gallery, Mechelen, and Regarding Distance at E.O.A.Projects, London. Group shows include Being: New Photography, MoMA, Post-Peace, Württ. Kunstverein Stuttgart, Al Riwaq Biennial Palestine, the Jerusalem Show, Searching for a Presentat Espoo Museum of Modern Art, the Shanghai Biennale, The Plough and Other Stars at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, A Million Lines: XII Baltic Triennial, La Mer au Milieu des Terres//Mare Medi Terraneum at Es Baluard, the Berlinale, and Sharjah Biennial. He teaches at Al-Quds Bard University, and currently the director of Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre.

Tayseer Barakat

Tayseer Barakat was born in Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza in 1959 and carried out his arts education in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1983. After completing his studies, he moved to Ramallah where he has been based ever since – both teaching and creating art.

Barakat has worked with a variety of materials and has experimented widely – with wood, metal and glass –, becoming one of Palestine’s foremost artists working today. Painting remains his first love and he continues to work at a prolific rate, drawing on the artistic heritage of the region and its ancient influences, and of Palestine, the Palestinian people and the Palestinian spirit.

Barakat has held 10 solo exhibitions and has participated in numerous group exhibitions with many of his contemporaries in Japan, USA, Brazil, Europe and across the Arab world.

Osama Said

Osama Said was born in 1957 in the small town of Nahaf, located between Lower and Upper Galilee. Said started his career in art with a degree in fine arts in Berlin. After graduating with high honors from Hochschule der Künste, he was granted several schol- arships, awards, and residencies that encouraged and expanded his artistry whilst allowing his stay in Germany to last 16 years. Having painted for years while abroad with only memories of Palestine, Said was struck by the painful reality of Palestinian life upon his return. As a result of his discoveries, Said’s work portrays the different faces of nature. Upon closer examination, howev- er, viewers will find several layers of color that present themes of memory and forgetfulness; identity and alienation; illusion and reality. The painting of the Palestinian landscape that appears in most of his drawings attests to the loss of Palestinian land in 1948 and the continuous political reality of struggle over the land.

Dina Mattar

Dina Mattar (b. Gaza, 1985) graduated with a BA in fine art and education from Al Aqsa University in Gaza in 2007. Her work has been exhibited in many exhibitions in Palestine and regionally, as well as in Europe, USA, South America and the UAE. In 2012 she was an artist-in-residence at Cité International des Arts in Paris. She lives and works in Gaza, and is a member of the Eltiqa artists’ collective.

Varvara Razak

Varvara Razak was born in Belarus. She completed her studies in Contemporary Art at Dar Al-Kalima University of Arts and Culture in Bethlehem (2017).

Razak is a multidisciplinary artist, primarily using painting, photography and video to express her concepts. Her themes are very much inspired from the daily life in Palestine, the political situation, and especially Human Rights issues.

Razak participated in a number of group exhibitions in Palestine and USA. She was awarded third and second prizes in the Palestinian Photo Marathon (2015-2016); Ismail Shammout Prize at Dar Al Kalima University (2016) and the first award of the Palestinian Anticorruption Competition (2017). Razak currently lives and works in East Jerusalem.

Fayez Sirsawi

Fayez Sirsawi was born in Gaza (1961). He holds a master’s degree in sculpture from the Fine Art Academy at Mimarsina University of Istanbul (1986). Sirsawi exhibited widely in Palestine and abroad. He was also an artist in Residence at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (1999 2000). Al-Sirsawi currently lives and works in Gaza.

Rana Samara

Rana Samara (born 1985, Jerusalem) is a Palestinian artist and a graduate of the International Art Academy, Ramallah (2015). Samara’s current body of work – Intimate Space – explores societal norms, sexuality, gender roles, and other factors associated with modern Palestinian life. Her work focuses on the less obvious factors that underpin the daily lives of women who reside in overcrowded refugee camps and rural communities – women whose lives continue to be blighted both by conservative traditions and the exigencies of life under occupation.

Focusing on marital intimacy, Samara demystifies many social taboos and translates these onto large, bold and colorful canvasses that are both remarkable social statements and beautiful artistic constructs. Frank conversations with women form the backbone of her work that transcends the private space into the realm of the public. Often depicting the aftermath of sexual encounters, Samara’s paintings are remarkable visual metaphors of the lives of Palestinian women existing in restricted environments, cramped and constrained by internal traditions and by external forces.

Samara is a highly inquisitive, courageous and determined artist. These characteristics propelled her – in the first place – to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Fine Art as a mother of three children from a conservative background. Her passion for art and formidable determination has led her to pursue further studies in Fine Art and Theory at Northwestern University, Chicago.

Samara has participated in group and solo exhibitions in Zawyeh Gallery, Ramallah and her works has been shown in Dubai Art Fair (2017) and Beirut Art Fair (2017).

Jerusalem 51 Years of Occupation Jerusalem 51 Years of Occupation Jerusalem 51 Years of Occupation Jerusalem 51 Years of Occupation Jerusalem 51 Years of Occupation Jerusalem 51 Years of Occupation Jerusalem 51 Years of Occupation Jerusalem 51 Years of Occupation Jerusalem 51 Years of Occupation Jerusalem 51 Years of Occupation

Artists featured in this exhibition

Sliman Mansour

Nabil Anani

Hosni Radwan

Fouad Agbaria

Osama Said

Further Inforamtion:

Works available via Artsy
For inquiries and questions contact us

Out of Place by Hosni Radwan

/ Hosni Radwan (Exhibition) / Exhibition, Hosni Radwan, Out of Place /

December 9, 2017 – January 11, 2018
Zawyeh Gallery

In his latest exhibition” Out of Place “, Palestinian artist Hosni Radwan makes a provocative association between tragedy and the plane. Tragic events occupy the visual field, rendering dimension impossible and halting representation at a single level. In the absence of familiar depth, the eye must seek out a different way to look.

Delicate drawings of faces, figures, boats, planes, clouds, rocks repeat across Radwan’s canvases here without conclusion, rendered fragile and often interrupted and overlaid by startling blocks of colour. These blocks bisect and structure the canvases, directing the eye precisely along their lines in often-unfamiliar directions. Many of the paintings, for instance, read vertically rather than horizontally, a disturbance of narrative progression that recalls the profound disruption of Palestine’s historical narrative in the twentieth century. The figures in these paintings, too, refuse easy viewing: their faces are often turned down or away, and elsewhere eyes are shadowed, closed, or obscured by washes of paint. The paintings recall and refuse the simulation of communication – the meeting of eyes, painted and real – at the centre of the traditional portrait. The boats, rocks and skies that re-occur across the paintings are each abstracted and dislocated, never permitted to form the landscapes from which they are drawn.

Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #5, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 140 cm

As such, these paintings, which might seem gentle or even playful, constitute a profound engagement on multiple levels with the contemporary tragedy of Palestine. Images in which figures are interrupted or bisected by panels of colour take on new meaning in the light of the horrors wrought on human bodies by occupation and war in, for instance, Gaza. That the painted faces refuse to meet the viewer’s eye seems a response to the stream of media images of Palestinian suffering, which have stripped from those photographed even the privacy of grief. The motifs and colours that reappear across the paintings, in new permutations and yet always recognizable, recall the sheer endlessness of Palestinian tragedy, which has already stretched across decades and shows no sign of a finale.

Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #19, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 80 x 70 cm

Repetition here does not produce coherence or form, only resemblance. For all their play with surface, the paintings are at their most profound in the questions they pose about the need for new modes of representation in the face of tragic repetition, and the limits of art in the face of human suffering.

Hosni Radwan Palestinian Art Hosni Radwan Palestinian Art

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #10, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 140 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #8, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 140 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #13, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 140 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #23, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 40 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #5, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 140 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #24, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #25, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #9, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 140 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #26, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #20, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 40 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #17, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 60 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #19, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 80 x 70 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #16, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 95 x 56 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #4, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 130 x 130 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #11, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 40 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #2, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 130 x 130 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #1, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 140 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #3, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 140 x 140 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #15, 2017, mixed media on canvas, 67 x 67 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Out of Place #22, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 35 cm

Artists featured in this exhibition

Hosni Radwan

Further Information:

Works available by Hosni Radwan via Artsy
For inquiries and questions contact us

Crossroads Collective

/ Ayed Arafeh (Exhibition), Hosni Radwan (Exhibition), Juhaina Kandalaft (Exhibition), Rana Samara (Exhibition), Samah Shihadi (Exhibition), Zuhdy Qadri (Exhibition) / Ayed Arafeh, Crossroads, Exhibition, Hosni Radwan, Juhaina Kandalaft, Rana Samara, Samah Shihadi, Zuhdy Qadri /

January 14 – February 4, 2016
Zawyeh Gallery

“Our mission is to get Palestinian artists known around the world, this is very important. Palestinian artists are unique, our work is related to our struggle. Some artists use traditional Palestinian symbolism and explore our struggle for land and freedom, others look at personal struggles. Art offers people a relationship to Palestine that can’t be taken from the media.”

Ziad Anani is clearly very passionate about Palestinian art. The son of Palestinian artist Nabil Anani, Ziad Anani grew up “surrounded by art works”. In December 2013 he staged his first “open house” exhibition in the house in which he was raised. His vision was to create a space in Ramallah in which Palestinian artists could show and promote their work.

More than two years after the project began, and with the family now living elsewhere in the city, the original Anani family house is now known at Zawyeh Gallery (Corner Gallery), and Anani hosts regular exhibitions as well as representing several Palestinian artists commercially.

The current exhibition opened at Zawyeh on Saturday 18th January. ‘Crossroads’ brings together the work of 6 Palestinian artists and although not intentionally tied by a thematic link, exhibition curator Sulieman Mleahat believes that in common with much Palestinian art, the struggle for ‘identity’ is strongly evident in all the works on show:

“The ability to articulate their own personal story is the strength or success of an artist. In these works, ‘identity’ manifests itself in many ways – intimate struggles of women, internal societal issues, national and political struggles, family, rebirth and transition. Nobody lives in a bubble – that includes Palestinian artists and this is reflected through their work.”

Alongside its work with established Palestinian artists, Zawyeh is also working to support ‘new’ artists – those who have yet to be firmly established on the international art scene. The gallery is also building a permanent collection of its own, a project that Anani sees as an attempt “to keep an important collection of Palestinian art within the country”.

Refusing to accept politically imposed borders of division yet unable to physically reach various areas of historic Palestine, Anani faces many challenges in bringing together works and artists from such areas. He is therefore forced to rely on trusted contacts in various areas and the internet to view work, yet this collective focus is fundamental to Zawyeh’s mission:

“‘Palestine’ is an historical country with a very sad history. Over time we have lost so much space and so many landscapes, but we – Palestinians – can’t accept divisions between each other. Palestinian artists in ’48’ invite me to their studios but I cant get there, the same with Gaza. We are all Palestinian artists but we cannot get to each other.”

Crossroads Collective Palestinian Art Crossroads Collective Palestinian Art

: "Crossroads" opening

: "Crossroads Collective" opening

: "Crossroads Collective" opening

: "Crossroads Collective" opening

: "Crossroads Collective" opening

: "Crossroads Collective" opening

: "Crossroads Collective" opening

: "Crossroads Collective" opening

: "Crossroads Collective" opening

: "Crossroads Collective" opening

: "Crossroads Collective" opening

: "Crossroads Collective" opening

Artists featured in this exhibition

Samah Shihadi

Further Inforamtion:

Available works via Artsy
For inquiries and questions contact us

Fragments by Hosni Radwan

/ Hosni Radwan (Exhibition) / Exhibition, Fragments, Hosni Radwan /

March 21 – April 2, 2015
Zawyeh Gallery

Hosni Radwan’s paintings have absorbed the colours, and spirit of Palestine mingling in the turmoil of feelings, faces, thoughts and bodies that inhabit it. The artist is what Baudelaire describes as a “lover of crowds and incognitos” who appreciates “every- thing that happens on the surface of the world”. We meet Radwan’s art in the streets of Palestine where a woman sits pensive on the doorsteps holding her knees in search of some rest (Patiently Waiting, acrylic and charcoal, 2015). Is she waiting for someone, thinking or dreaming? Another woman walks by; a girl whispers in her friend’s ear (Discrete, 2015 charcoal on paper); a gust of wind blows and dark hair trails in the breeze (Breeze,2015 mixed media on paper); a man walks by on his way to work; a woman sits in a café; will he talk to her? Men and women carry on their usual business in the streets of the city, in the market and in shops. They all live in the universe of Radwan’s work. Bodies and faces appear and disappear in the artist’s densely worked paintings. Each body is a continent; each face is a map of affects, memories and expressions. For, a mouth or an eye is not simply body parts – they have their own stories to tell. Stories without words that speak to us in the language of material – of vivid colours, shapes and textures. The artist depicts bodies and faces as fragmented; in his paintings any illusion of unity of perception is disrupted. These bodies and faces are like the places they inhabit, a modern patchwork of memories, concrete buildings, images, lived lives, smells and sensations. Any ideal unity is exploded. To create the effect of fragmentation, the artist’s work makes a references to Picasso’s deconstructive style sometimes using as support wood or paper to disrupt not only the unity of the depicted subject, but also of the support itself. Mask (2014), for instance, a diptych showing two mouths roughly painted in white on a piece of wood mounted on supports made of wood and paper. In Radwan’s paintings the face becomes the surface on which the subject’s interiority and the outside world are equally reflected. A nose becomes a tree, a chick changes into a square, a mouth transforms into a bench. As the painting takes shape, figures emerge and the reality of the place unfolds. In Radwan’s work, art manifests with the insatiable passion for seeing and feeling. It sets up house in the heart of the place, in the middle of the ebb and flow of the crowd, in the infinite and the fleeting. Art responds to the movements of a place, and reproduces the multiplicity of life and the flickering grace of all its elements: colours, spirits, joy and pain of Palestine. Radwan’s paintings and drawings do not so much depict the place, for the place lives in them.

Hosni Radwan Palestinian Art Hosni Radwan Palestinian Art Hosni Radwan Palestinian Art Hosni Radwan Palestinian Art

: Hosni Radwan, "Faces series", 2015, mixed media on canvas, 50 x 50 cm

: Hosni Radwan, "Faces series", 2015, mixed media on canvas, 50 x 50 cm

: Hosni Radwan, "Faces series", 2015, mixed media on canvas, 50 x 50 cm

: Hosni Radwan, "Faces series", 2015, mixed media on canvas, 50 x 50 cm

: Hosni Radwan, "Faces series", 2015, mixed media on canvas, 50 x 50 cm

: Hosni Radwan, "Faces series", 2015, mixed media on canvas, 50 x 50 cm

: Hosni Radwan, "Faces series", 2015, mixed media on canvas, 50 x 50 cm

: Hosni Radwan, "Faces series", 2015, mixed media on canvas, 50 x 50 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Ladders, 2015, charcoal and acrylic on canvas, 120 x 120 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Patiently Waiting, 2015, charcoal and acrylic on canvas, 120 x 120 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Obverse, 2015, mixed media on canvas, 50 x 50 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Fragments, 2015, mixed media on canvas, 150 x 180 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Observation, 2015, charcoal and acrylic on canvas, 120 x 120 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Pomegranate Love, 2014, mixed media on paper, 70 x 50 cm

: Hosni Radwan, Ain-Elmriase, 2015, mixed media on canvas, 150 x 150 cm

Hosni Radwan was born in Baghdad in 1955 and completed his studies at the Fine Art College in 1978. Radwan is an abstract painter and his work is influenced by the environment in which he has lived including Beirut in the 1970s and 1980s. Places, landscapes and portraiture continue to dominate his work.

He has exhibited widely with many of his contemporaries and his solo shows have been held in cities including Tunis (1993); Tokyo (1985); Nicosia (1983); Ramallah (1997, 2002, 2003); Baghdad (2001) and Kuwait (2008).

From the Artist

In this exhibition, I went back to some early spontaneous scripts bearing expressions of places and people and transforming them through an action of passion- into black lines forming shapes of human bodies. By operating on bigger spaces, I converted my paintings into a home for extended colors, solid materials, soil and paper scraps, intending to achieve the same goal.

Hosni Radwan, March 2015

Artists featured in this exhibition

Hosni Radwan

Further Information:

Works available by Hosni Radwan via Artsy
For inquiries and questions contact us

Colors of Life

/ Hosni Radwan (Exhibition), Mohamed Abusal (Exhibition), Nabil Anani (Exhibition), Rafat Asad (Exhibition), Sliman Mansour (Exhibition), Taqi Sabateen (Exhibition), Tayseer Barakat (Exhibition) / Colors of Life, Exhibition, Hosni Radwan, Mohamed Abusal, Rafat Asad, Sliman Mansour, Taqi Sabateen, Tayseer Barakat /

October 25 – November 15, 2014
Zawyeh Gallery

Colors of Life brings together a collection of new and old works by some of Palestine’s most notable artists as well as new and emerging talents.

We are thrilled to organize Colors of Life for such a fantastic group of artists. It is our mission to showcase both the work of established artists and at the same time offer opportunities to emerging artists to present their work – often next to their teachers and mentors.

Up until recently, there were very few opportunities for artists to exhibit their work. We are now regularly presenting work of artists from Gaza, the West Bank and 1948 Palestine under one roof. This has been a rarity in Palestine and it’s thanks to the efforts of all those associated with Zawyeh that it has become possible.

Themed under the title Colors of Life, each piece is the individual artist’s interpretation of life in Palestine. The ongoing Israeli occupation and its ruthless onslaught on life and the fabric of Palestinian society are central to the works of many artists on show. However, the beauty of Palestine – its land people – feature greatly in the show.

Colors of Life is a collection of individual works depicting the trials and tribulations of life in Palestine. It also shows that in spite of all the many challenges we encounter here in Palestine, creativity and excellence are plentiful.

Colors of Life features new and old work by Ahmad Kanaan, Dina Ghazal, Faten Toubasi, Hosni Radwan, Isra Frehat, Jawad Malhi, Khetam Heby, Mahmoud Awad, Majed Shala, Moeen Hassouneh, Mahammad Abusal, Mohammad Jolani, Nabil Anani, Rafat Asad, Sliman Mansour, Taqi Spateen and Tayseer Barakat.

Sulieman Mleahat

Colors of Life Palestinian Art Colors of Life Palestinian Art