.jpg)
Artist Statement
Palestinian visual artist Hazem Harb’s trajectory, spanning several decades, maintains an unwavering dialogue with his symbolically charged homeland.
Moving from Gaza to Rome and then on to the UAE, Harb has learned to navigate life as a liminal. Knowing that Palestine can never be just a ‘land’, the artist unleashes an ever- evolving repertoire of artistic techniques to negotiate a space which has been carved up and re-drawn many times. His art is at once subsumed in deep locality, fuelled by personal insight, and entangled in conversations that cannot be easily separated from the global arena.
His practice is intended more as visual excavation than romanticisation of the Other, and through it, we can explore the paradoxical and pressured relations between people and places. Steering away from nostalgia and the fetishisation of displacement and war, he negotiates a constructed axis of complex social and cultural relations: built and pastoral environments, modernist Bauhaus concrete and Jerusalem’s Old City walls, longing and belonging.
Much like the artists of the early twentieth century who, through the deployment of collage, healed from the trauma of the first world war by binding together everyday and artistic experiences; Harb succeeds in materialising complex and unfamiliar terrain. Operating as a researcher, by collecting and synthesising archives of rarified ephemera including photographs, negatives and maps, Harb mediates his materials in a manner which dismantles them from a static space. Through collage he stitches them together to form fresh constructions that invite unheard discourses and a historical rethinking.
By Laura Cherrie Beaney
Contemporary Heritage, Tbari Artspace Dubai (2020) The Persistence of Memory, Montoro12, Brussels, Belgium (2019); Power Does Not Defeat Memory, Sabsay Gallery, Copenhagen (2019); The Everlasting Presence of an Excluded Memory, Art Berlin (2018); The Invisible Land escape and Conrete Futures (curated by Lara Khaldi); Salsali Private Museum, Dubai, (2015); Al Baseera, Athr Gallery, Jeddah(2014); I Can Imagine You Without Your Home, Dubai, UAE(2012); Is This Your First Time in Gaza? The Mosaic Rooms, AM. Qattan Foundation, London, UK(2010) Passaggio di tempo, Luigi Pigorini Museum, Rome, Italy (2007)
“Mara’ina” Ithra Museum, king abdulaziz centre for world culture. KSA (2019)
gohyang: home, SeMA, Seoul Museum of Art (2019) Intimate Terrains; The Palestinian Museum (2019); Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Jaou Tunis, Tunisia (2018); Active Forms Sharjah Art Foundation (2018); El Beit, Tabari Artspace (2018) The Absence of Paths, Tunisian Pavilion, 57th Biennale di Venezia (2017); The Armory Show, New York (2016); Chers Amis - MNAM, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2016); A View From Inside, Foto Fest Houston Biennial Houston USA (2014); and Sphere6, Galleria Continua’s Le Moulin, France (2013 and 2014); Common Grounds, Villa Stuck Museum, Munich (2015); The Written City, Brugge CityHall, Belgium(2015)
BIENNIALS:
13thCairo Biennale (2019) The Absence of Paths, TunisianPavilion, 57th Biennale di Venezia, Italy( 2017)
A View From Inside, Foto Fest Houston Biennial Houston USA(2014)
ART FAIRS:
Art Berlin, Everlasting presence of an Excluded Memory with Tabari Artspace (2018)
The Armory Show, Athr Gallery, New York (2016)
Art Dubai, Athr (2012, 2013, 2014 (2016)
Artissima, Present Future, Athr Gallery, Torino, Italy (2012, 2014)
Paris Photo, Athr Gallery Paris, France (2014)
Abu Dhabi Art, Athr Gallery, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2013, 2014)
FIAC, Athr Gallery, Paris, France(2014)
START, Saachi Gallery, Athr Gallery, London (2014)
Art International Istanbul, Athr Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey (2013)
Art13, Athr Gallery, London, UK (2012)
AWARDS & RESIDENCIES:
City international des arts, Al Mansouria Foundation (2013)
Satellite, Dubai UAE (2012)
The Delfina Foundation and A.M. Qattan Foundation, London, UK (2011)
The Mosaic Rooms, AM. Qattan Foundation London, UK (2010)
Darat Al Funun, Khalid Shoman Foundation, Amman, Jordan
Five-month training internship in visual art, scholarship awarded by Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Academy of Fine Arts, Rome, Italy (2006)
Darat al-Funun, Abdel Hamid Shoman Foundation (Amman, Jordan) selected by Khalil Al-Sakakini Cultural Centre, Ramallah, Palestine (2001)
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
Wall Street International Hazem Harb in Sabsay Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark (2019)
Tribe Photo Magazine Hazem Harb: New Histories Collaging Palestine’s Past (2019)
MOJEH Magazine Bridging Borders (2019)
Harper’s Bazaar Palestine Through Three Eyes (2018)
The National Palestinian artist Hazem Harb Leads Nomadic Existence (2014)
Contemporary Art Practices Volume X Hazem Harb, By Jareh Das (2012)
Rolling Stone Magazine Hazem Harb Documents Plight of his Native Gaza (2012)
Al Arabiya News (broadcast) Hazem Harb, Portraying suffering of Palestinians at the Gaza crossing (2012)
BBC (broadcast) Hazem Harb, Art imitates life in Gaza By Alan Johnston BBC correspondent in Gaza (2004)
SELECTED COLLECTIONS:
The Palestinina Museum
The British Museum, London, UKThe Oriental Museum, Durham University, UK
Center George Pompidou, Paris
Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE
SPM, Salsali Private Museum, Dubai, UAE
AM. Qattan Foundation, London, UK
Faurschou Foundation, Copenhagen Denmark
Ithra King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture KSA