Khaled Takreti explores the intricacies of interpersonal relationships through emotive portraits that register space and time. Capturing subtle gestures or fleeting moments of expressive admissions, Takreti zeroes in on the fragile nature of social institutions. In his earlier works, the familial unit or bond between mother and child provided a springboard for such examinations and are rendered with reference to his own biography. The artist’s large-scale compositions often revolve around female figures, which he feels brings a sense of stability and strength while generating a tranquility and balance in his work. Positioned against vacant or minimal backgrounds, he utilises colour, compositional design, and imaginative imagery to submerge his subjects in the psychology of particular moments.

Born in Beirut in 1964, Khaled Takreti lives and works in Paris. He studied architecture and design at the University of Damascus and worked for the General Directorate of Antiquity and Museums in Syria prior to traveling to New York in 1995 where he resided for two years and focused on contemporary art. Exhibiting since 1996, his paintings have been shown in the Alexandria Biennale and Art Hong Kong, among other venues, and are housed in the collections of the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art; the National Museum of Damascus; and the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts. Takreti’s recent solo and group exhibitions include Gwangju Museum of Arts, South Korea (2014); Ayyam Gallery London (2013); Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2012, 2010); Ayyam Gallery Beirut (2010); Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2011); and Paris et l'Art Contemporain Arabe, Paris (2011). In 2012 Takreti was named among the top 101 greatest living artists in France by arts publication Art Absolument. 

Samia Halaby is a leading abstract painter and an influential scholar of Palestinian art. Central to Halaby’s theoretical treatment of abstraction are formal strategies that attempt to examine and communicate physical properties as they are experienced in reality. Recognised as a pioneer of contemporary abstraction in the Arab world, although based in the United States since 1951, she has exhibited throughout the region and abroad. Samia Halaby was the first fulltime female associate professor at the Yale School of Art, a position she held for nearly a decade during the initial part of her career when she taught at universities across the United States. In addition to a renewed interest in her oeuvre recently, historians of new media are currently re-evaluating Halaby’s experiments with computer-based painting in the 1980s, which she created programs for and performed live at Lincoln Center and the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York and categorised as kinetic art.

Born in Jerusalem in 1936, Samia Halaby’s work is widely collected by international institutions including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art (New York and Abu Dhabi), the National Gallery of Art, Washington, the Art Institute of Chicago, Institute du Monde Arab, The British Museum, and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. Halaby’s writings on art have appeared in Leonardo, Journal of Arts, Sciences and Technology and Arab Studies Quarterly, among others, while her independently published survey Liberation Art of Palestine: Palestinian Paintings and Sculpture in the Second Half of the 20th Century (2002) is considered a seminal text of Palestinian art history. The artist's second monograph, Samia Halaby, Five Decades of Painting and Innovation (2014), was published by Booth-Clibborn Editions in conjunction with an eponymous retrospective. 

Lebanese artist and architect Nadim Karam’s multi-disciplinary approach incorporates painting, drawing, sculpture, and writing. Fusing various cultural influences, Karam’s works transcend social, political, and national borders, forming a unique pictorial language, replete with recurring symbols, and with its own original characters and narratives. They form an alphabet of sorts, in what is an ongoing, sometimes absurdist, exploration of the creative power of dreams.

Renowned for his public art and work in urban regeneration, Karam has most recently been lauded for his architectural plan The Cloud, which made international headlines for its revolutionary ideas on how to reconfigure public space amidst Dubai’s growing cityscape. Karam’s projects and installations are interventions that seek to animate cities as diverse as Melbourne, Prague, Dubai, Beirut, London, and Nara, Japan. These interventions often take the form of large-scale steel sculptures, described as ‘urban toys’ by the artist. For Karam, it is not only we, as humans, who need to dream, but our cities too – his urban toys are acts of whimsy and a rebellion against the soulless nature of so many modern spaces, bringing to life the environments around him. Says Karam: “Each urban toy has a message. An open message ready to be inhabited by stories which become mingled with history.”

Born in 1957 in Senegal, Nadim Karam lives and works in Beirut. He received a Bachelor of Architecture from the American University of Beirut (1982) and a Doctorate of Architecture from the University of Tokyo (1989). In 1996, he established Atelier Hapsitus (www.hapsitus.com), a satellite grouping of young Lebanese architects, and designers seeking to create an original urban vocabulary though large-scale art installation and architectural works for various cities worldwide. Karam’s work has appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide including Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris (2013), as well as biennales such as Venice, Liverpool, and Gwangju. The artist’s past publications include The Cloud, The Desert and The Arabian Breeze (2007); Urban Toys (2006) and Voyage (2000). In 2013 his monograph Stretching Thoughts was published by Booth-Clibborn Editions. 

Ammar Al Beik’s artistic career stems from unconventional roots. Abandoning his pursuit of a degree in business administration from the University of Damascus, he began experimenting with photography while working at a camera repair shop in the heart of the Syrian capital. Receiving rigorous training through this inadvertent apprenticeship, he began to work in photography and inevitably turned to filmmaking. Two decades into his artistic practice, Al Beik continues to alternate between photography and film, and recently added installation to his repertoire, effortlessly moving between media with an acute sense of capturing narrative structures through subtle nuance and an incisive interest in the potential of art as an act of rebellion.

Lost Images is a series based on undeveloped negatives that the artist bought from different vendors (some from the black market) in Syria. The artist developed these negatives, which date from 1950 to 1960, and subsequently manipulated them in order to exhume what was otherwise lost with the buildup of time, namely the minutiae of lives now forgotten. The motifs around each black and white picture represent photographs of sculptural portraits of women (Greek, Roman, etc) that exist at the Syrian National Museum taken by the artist in 2005. Such additional imagery cements the recovered photographs as transcendent relics.

Born in Damascus in 1972, Ammar Al Beik lives and works in Dubai. He has exhibited his photographs since the mid 1990s, when he simultaneously began a career in filmmaking that has received critical acclaim and a number of distinctions from juries across the globe. Internationally renowned for his films, he has participated in festivals worldwide, including the Sao Paulo International Film Festival; Edinburgh Documentary Film Festival; Berlin International Film Festival; and Locarno International Film Festival. In 2006 he was the first Syrian filmmaker to receive the award for best documentary at the Venice International Film Festival. In 2011, he returned to the prestigious festival to present The Sun’s Incubator, a work exploring the domestic effects of the Arab Spring. Al Beik’s solo and group exhibitions of photography include Fotofest, Houston (2014); Los Angeles County Museum (2013); Ayyam Gallery Al Quoz, Dubai (2013); Ayyam Gallery Damascus (2011, 2010, 2008); Ayyam Gallery Beirut (2010). Al Beik's artworks are held in private and public institutions such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) 

Safwan Dahoul explores the corporal and psychological effects of alienation, solitude, and longing that punctuate the human experience at various stages in life. Partly autobiographical, his ongoing Rêve series utilises the formal properties of painting—composition, palette, and brushwork—to recreate the subconscious sense of enclosure that surfaces during times of crisis, whether in death, estrangement, or political conflict. Dahoul’s recurring female protagonist facilitates this visceral encounter through her contorted body, often- vacant eyes, and minimal yet monumental physicality.

Born in 1961 in Hama, Syria, Safwan Dahoul lives and works in Dubai. Dahoul attended the Suheil Al Ahdab Center of Plastic Arts and the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus. In 1987 he received a scholarship to study abroad from the Ministry of Higher Education and relocated to Belgium, achieving his Doctorate from the Higher Institute of Plastic Arts in Mons in 1997.

His work is held in numerous private and public collections including the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; The Samawi Collection, Dubai; The Farjam Collection, Dubai; and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, Kuwait. Dahoul has participated in recent solo and group exhibitions at Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2014, 2011); Ayyam Gallery London (2013); Edge of Arabia, London (2013); Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi (2013); and Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris (2012). 

Long considered one of the Gulf’s leading artists and a pioneer of conceptual art in the region, Faisal Samra describes himself as a nomad wandering through time. The cultural amalgam of having lived in Paris, New York, and Beirut while also travelling in Morocco and Asia has led to diverse influences in his artistic practice. Combining elements of digital photography, painting, sculpture, video, and performance, Samra probes the political fissures and social contradictions of visual culture through works that subvert historical narratives and contemporary realities. Consequently, the target of Samra’s creative machination is primarily visual culture predicated upon systems of mass media, advertisements, or political communication.

Bahraini-born Saudi national Faisal Samra graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In addition to his artistic practice, he has worked as an art and graphic design consultant for the Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris), a stage designer for Saudi television, and an instructor at the Fine Arts Department of Amman University in Jordan.

Samra has contributed to numerous seminal group shows such as Word Into Art at the British Museum (London and Dubai), Languages of the Desert: Contemporary Arab Art from the Gulf States (Abu Dhabi, Paris and Kunstmuseum, Bonn), and Traversée, (Paris, Cairo, Rabat). His work is housed in the collections of The British Museum (London) the National Museum (Mexico City), and the Modern Art Museum (Cairo), and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art (Doha). Samra has participated in Biennials in Singapore and Cairo, and is a jury member for the Alexandria Biennale, Egypt. 

Palestinian artist Oussama Diab applies a conceptual approach to painting by exploiting the stylistic variants of the medium as emotive prompts in order to explore how form can articulate the urgency of sociopolitical issues. In an age where digital media have taken a dominant role in filtering our everyday experiences and the construction of imagery has become integral to the negotiation of modern life, Diab addresses the contradictions and obstacles of political conflict, globalisation, and exile through playful symbolism, references to popular culture, iconic imagery, and narrative structures. With each new series he adopts a different painting style, reflecting the impermanent nature of art as it becomes increasingly conceptual and further dematerialised.

Born in 1977 in Damascus, Oussama Diab lives and works in Beirut. A graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus in 2002, he has featured in solo and group exhibitions throughout the region and is the recipient of numerous awards including the Shabab Young Artists exhibition in Syria. Solo shows include Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2012); Ayyam Gallery Beirut (2010-11); Ayyam Gallery Dubai (2010); Ayyam Gallery Damascus (2009). 

Mouteea Murad’s entrance into art was marked by monotone, expressionist compositions that explored the anguish of modern man. In 2007, however, he emerged with a renewed outlook that redirected his painting style. Abandoning his initial aesthetic, he began to explore colour relativity, spatiality, and the visual dynamism of geometric forms by adhering to the non-objective directives of Islamic art, which references the splendour of the natural world by privileging abstraction and its ability to ignite the senses. Several phases of painting have resulted from Murad’s new focus as he builds on the breakthroughs of previous movements, exploring, for example, automatic brushwork, the illusionistic perspective of Op art, the symmetry of geometric abstraction, and the collapsing planes of Suprematism.

In recent years the unification of spirituality and formalism of Islamic art has continued to serve as the basis for Murad’s work as he rejects the ugliness of war now plaguing his native Syria. Seeking to offer beauty to a world consumed by conflict, he finds inspiration in the quiet moments that surround him such as a blossoming tree in his studio’s garden. This sense of serenity becomes an act of defiance as his compositions radiate with colour in harmonious linear patterns that seek to transport the viewer.

Born in 1977 in Homs, Syria, Mouteea Murad lives and works in Cairo. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus in 2001. His works are housed in private and public collections internationally, including the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts. The artist’s recent solo exhibitions include Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2013); Ayyam Gallery Beirut (2011); Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2011); Ayyam Gallery Damascus (2010). 

Elias Izoli is a self-taught realist painter whose creativity was harnessed at an exceptionally young age. In Damascus, his talent was recognised early on and he was given a solo exhibition at the Russian Cultural Centre at age seventeen. With consummate draftsmanship, a marked command of colour, and an intensive approach to capturing his subjects, Izoli’s compositions defy conventional portraiture. Recently, the impact of the Syrian war has inspired him to produce psychologically laden portraits of children caught in the crossfire of violence.

Born in Damascus in 1976, Elias Izoli lives and works in the city. He has exhibited since 1993 and was included in group shows at Ayyam Gallery Beirut and Dubai in 2010, 2012, and 2013. 

In his large-scale mixed media works, Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik transforms unconventional materials such as charcoal, plaster, starch, ash, and burlap into evocative mediums that reproduce the patina of imbued surfaces. Basing his “combine paintings” on the weathered layers of graffiti, markings, and cracks that can be found on the exterior surfaces of public spaces, he seeks to explore how such understated facets can serve as records of the oscillation of society over time. Replicating the outer textures, colours, and shapes of deteriorating facades, Majdal Al-Beik excavates the buried traces of past lives, passages that situate cities as reluctant witnesses.

With the start of the recent war in Syria, Majdal Al-Beik’s practice has reflected greater usage of assemblage through the addition of found objects such as small crosses, fabric strips, string, guns, and knives in order to communicate the stark circumstances of life under conflict.

Born in a small village on the outskirts of Al-Hasakah, Syria in 1973, Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik trained at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus. His works are housed in public and private collections throughout the Middle East and Europe and he has been the recipient of several awards, including those from the Latakia Biennale and the Shabab Ayyam competition for emerging artists. Selected solo and group exhibitions include Ayyam Gallery DIFC (2013); Ayyam Gallery Beirut (2012); Ayyam Gallery Damascus (2008); National Museum of Aleppo (2006); Tehran Biennale for Art in the Islamic World (2005); Unesco Palace, Beirut (2001); and the British Council, Damascus (2000). 

Afshin Pirhashemi examines the complexities of life in modern day Iran through photorealist portraits that often bleed at their edges into expressionist compositions, becoming dramatic tableauxs. Pirhashemi is fascinated by the role of women in contemporary Iranian society and their relationships to the world around them. Tapping into the psychosocial dimensions of contemporary Iran, Pirhashemi explores manifestations of power as they appear or are negotiated through gendered bodies and spaces.

Born in 1974 in Urmia, Afshin Pirhashemi now lives and works in Tehran. His works are housed in public and private collections throughout the Middle East and Europe and he is the recipient of awards from the 2003 Tehran 6th International Art Biennial, and the 2004 Beijing Art Biennial Award. Solo exhibitions include Ayyam Gallery, Dubai (2013); Homa art Gallery, Tehran (2009); Seyhoun Art Gallery, Tehran (2005); and Barg Gallery, Tehran (2005). Group exhibitions include In & Out, Milan (2009); Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran (2006); Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran (2004, 2003). 

Mohammad Bozorgi approaches calligraphy with an architectural eye that is evident in the mathematical structure and symmetry of letters, especially those comprising his Crying for Honour series. Bozorgi’s masterful command of the centuries-old tradition is the result of intensive studies in classical calligraphic forms such as divani, kufic, nastaliq, naskh, sols, Mohaggegh and broken nastaliq in order to develop distinctly stylized characters based on Arabic and Persian examples. After training with the Society of Iranian Calligraphers for over a decade, Bozorgi left to pursue more innovative calligraphic forms. Drawing from his background in engineering, he makes qualitative calculations when constructing his works, using the directives of geometry to create abstract illusions of movement and space. Building on the breakthroughs of his predecessors, such as those who led the Saqqakhaneh school of Iranian painters in the 1960s, Bozorgi is recognised as a leading figure among the “New Generation” of contemporary calligraphers.

Born in Tehran in 1978, Mohammad Bozorgi holds a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering as well as an MBA from the Industrial Management Institute and Momtaz degrees from the Calligraphy Association of Iran. His recent solo and group exhibitions have been held at Ayyam Gallery, Jeddah (2014); Homa Gallery, Tehran (2014); Galerie Nicolas Flamel (2013); and Kashya Hildebrand Gallery, Zurich (2012). 

Ali Shirzai has been practicing calligraphic arts for the last forty years. The artist’s brightly coloured canvases pay homage to the beauty of the spiritual and the poetic in the Quran. This particular lot references Surah Al Rahman from the Quran, which is composed entirely in Saj, rhyming prose characteristic of early Arab poetry. Surah Al Rahman is said to be “the adornment of the Quran,” and so the artist melds utterances of an aestheticised nature with representations of objects and phenomena from the natural world. Shirazi pairs Quranic verses such as Al Rahman and Al Hamd with representations of thawing ice or sandstorm patterning.

Ali Shirazi was born in 1960 in Shiraz, Iran. He has trained in calligraphy since 1974, obtaining a distinction from the Iranian Calligraphy Society. Shirazi was former Head of the Isfahan Calligraphy Society and is a member of the High Council of the Iranian Calligraphy Society, Tehran. His works are housed in various public and private collections including the Islamic Culture and Communication Organization, the Imam Ali Museum of Tehran, Tehran Quran Museum, Sharjah Art Museum, UAE, and the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar. 

Fathallah Zamroud’s recent paintings reflect the critical perceptions of space that have come with his training in architecture and fine art and his interest in the rigorous brushwork and emphatic uses of colour of the German Expressionists. Zamroud trained as an interior architect at the Lebanese American University prior to embarking on a seven-year studio intensive with Lebanese painter Louna Maalouf. Working alongside Maalouf, he gained knowledge of various formal techniques and experimented with a range of drawing and painting media.

When depicting disintegrating cities or the swelling yet desolate camps of the displaced, Zamroud zooms in on remnants and objects such as tires, ladders, temporary roofing materials, and tarpaulin. The artist’s expressionist compositions recall the restless brushstrokes of painters such as Karl Shmidt-Rottluff and Emil Nolde while his muted palette allows the viewer to enter such scenes “behind the surface of the real,” a place of pathos that Carla Schulz-Hoffmann once observed in the work of Max Beckmann during his exiled years in Amsterdam.

Born in Beirut in 1968, Fathallah Zamroud is a painter of Syrian-Lebanese origins. In 2014, he exhibited at Ayyam Gallery, Beirut in Material Remains, a joint exhibition with multidisciplinary artist Ginane Makki Bacho. 

Abdullah Murad has developed an exceptional painting style that some have described as “arabesque abstraction.” Considered an innovator in the contemporary abstract school of Syrian art, Murad has exhibited his spontaneous compositions for over thirty years. A consummate colourist whose compositions emanate with liberated forms, he creates an overwhelming sense of harmony through an effervescent palette that manipulates light and dark contrasts, reflecting an organic approach to abstraction. Shapes are created with brushstrokes ranging from restrained markings to vigorous lines that have been unleashed with explosive force.

Demonstrating a level of experimentalism that has distinguished his oeuvre, he also employs other techniques, including collage. Textures are built up so that the surface of the canvas seemingly leaps out at the viewer, while earthen hues effortlessly meet warm and cool colours. For the artist, the inspiration for his paintings cannot be located in a single moment or object. Forever evolving, his melodic compositions are extracted from the depths of the subconscious.

Born in Homs, Syria in 1944, Abdullah Murad graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus in 1970. Since then, he has exhibited through out the Middle East at venues such as Atassi gallery in Damascus, the Sharjah Biennial, and Doha’s Al Markhiya gallery. A solo exhibition at Ayyam Gallery Damascus in 2007 drew viewers from all over the region and was accompanied by a monograph covering the expanse of his oeuvre. His works are housed in the National Museum of Damascus and the Syrian Ministry of Culture, in addition to private collections around the world. 

A prominent sculptor in the Middle East, Syrian artist Lutfi Romhein has enjoyed widespread recognition for his public installations. Working in wood, stone, and bronze the artist’s oeuvre reflects diversity in techniques and themes. Romhein’s broad spectrum of sculpture includes examples exploring the forms of figuration found in ancient art such as Sumerian, Assyrian, and Pharaonic visual cultures and the organic fluidity of specific mediums, namely white marble. Other subjects have included the intimacy of Arab society found in the family unit, as seen in mother and child renderings or lovers portrayed in fleeting moments.

Born in Kraia, Syria in 1954, Lutfi Romhein lives and works in France. After completing his initial formal training, he opened a studio in Damascus where he experimented with different materials. In 1981, Romhein obtained a scholarship from the Italian consul, which allowed him to study sculpture at the Carrara Academy of Fine Arts from which he graduated in 1985. In 2008, he was named sculptor of the year by the Roy René Art and Cultural Association and has also had the opportunity to create monumental works for cities such as Washington and Dubai. Since 1975, the artist has held several individual and group exhibits around the world. Romhein’s permanent exhibitions include sculptures at the National Museum of Damascus, the National Museum of Amman in Jordan, and the Syrian Embassy in Washington. His iconic marble and granite work Together (2010) is also on view at Burj Khalifa, Dubai. 

Egyptian sculptor Mohammad Al Fayoumi’s works are voluminous portraits of animals and humans rendered in bronze. The artist’s ancestral village of Al Fayoum, occupies part of the ancient site of Crocodopolis, where Pharaonic monuments are found, and is one of the oldest cities in Egypt and the African continent. With roots in a locale of such monumentality, a sense of the magnificent and the historic comes through in the artist’s pensive sculptures. The human subjects of Al Fayoumi’s oeuvre include seminal or archetypal figures of Egyptian society, which include community leaders, everyday men, or the featured lot “Son of the Soil.” His animal figures include wise owls, fish, and birds.

Born in 1963, Mohamad Al Fayoumi is a member of the Mahmoud Mokhtar Association, Cairo, the Cairo Atelier, and the syndicate of Plastic Artists, Egypt. Al Fayoumi has exhibited in many local group exhibitions, Biennales, and symposia since 1990. He is the recipient of the third prize at the 5th and 7th Youth Salon, the fist prize at the Cairo Biennale for Ceramics, and has received certificates of appreciation from the Mokhtar Museum, Cairo, the First Sculpture Symposium in Bahrain, and that of Alay, Lebanon. He has participated in Art Sawa Dubai’s Undercurrent: Contemporary Egyptian Art (2009) and in Egyptian Tales, Artspace, Dubai (2012). 

Working in painting and drawing as well as in sculpture, throughout his practice, artist Alireza Astaneh has been focused on exploring calligraphic forms, reclaiming Persian Nakhoni technique from the past while extending it into new directions befitting of contemporary art.

Nakhoni is a method in which the artist embosses and makes writing apparent only through a slight pressure of his fingernails on the back of a delicate piece of paper. Historical examples of such work portray flowers, birds, lovers, buildings, and landscapes. In the mixed media on canvas Castelli series (2013), the artist attempts to create a connection between an isolated alphabet or word from Farsi-Arabic script combining it with the synasthesic qualities of colour to create the pieces, such that repetitions of the word “Esgh” come to be read and seen as “Golden Love” or “Red Love.”

In a similar vein, in Farhad from the artist’s Verbal Cage series of 2013, the word “Farhad” is repeated so as to form a layer, which is stacked onto identical sculptural layers that come together to form a four-sided structure representing “joy.” In Islamic art where figurative representation of living beings is abandoned in favour of pattern, line and geometry, repetition and multiplication are understood to represent the infinite, which in Astaneh’s case may refer to infinite love.

Born in 1982 in Arak, Iran, Alireza Astaneh currently resides in Tehran. He received the Elite Diploma of the Iranian Calligrapher’s Society in 1997, and a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design from Belford University, Texas in 2007. Soon after, he took part in an exhibition of Nastaliq Calligraphy Masters at the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Tehran, Iran. Since 2011, Astaneh has held several solo exhibitions at Homa Art Gallery in Tehran, and has participated in numerous international exhibitions and events such as Art Basel, Miami Beach, the Vienna Art Fair, the Shanghai Biennial, and Art Dubai. 

Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar works with photography, video, conceptual art and performance to underscore the precarity of life in occupied Palestine and the long-standing militaristic discourse around it, exploring the complex questions of conflict, nationhood, and home that have shaped the experiences of an increasingly fragmented and displaced population. The notion of state authority is a recurring concern: his project Live and Work in Palestine (2011-ongoing) saw the artist design a seemingly official Palestinian passport stamp, which was then offered to tourists arriving in Palestine. Similarly, Jarrar recently constructed an imposing concrete wall extending across the length of Ayyam Gallery London as an interventionist act that made tangible the tedious and sometimes life threatening commute or transit endured by Palestinians, whose communities remain under siege and are cut off by Israeli occupying forces through an extensive network of concrete walls, watch towers, fences, and segregated roads. Further exploring how the Israeli occupation has penetrated every aspect of daily life, Jarrar has created a series of cement soccer balls and other seemingly innocuous objects from material cut from Israel’s snaking barrier.

Born in Jenin in 1976, Khaled Jarrar lives and works in Ramallah, Palestine. He completed his education in Interior Design at the Palestine Polytechnic University in 1996 and graduated from the International Academy of Art Palestine with a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 2011. Recent solo exhibitions include Ayyam Gallery London (2013); Galerie Guy Bartschi, Geneva (2013); Galerie Polaris, Paris (2012); and International Academy of Art Palestine, Ramallah (2007). Recent group exhibitions include USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa (2013); the Jakarta Biennale (2013); the Berlin Biennale (2012); October Salon, Belgrade (2011); Al-Ma’mal Foundation, Jerusalem (2010); London Film Festival (2010); and the Instant Video Festival, Marseille (2009). Jarrar is also an award-winning filmmaker whose recent documentary, The Infiltrators (2012), won accolades at the 9th Dubai International Film Festival. 

Sama Alshaibi’s multi-media work explores spaces of conflict and the power struggles that arise in the aftermath of war and exile. Alshaibi is particularly interested in how such clashes occur between citizens and the state, creating vexing crises that impact the physical and psychological realms of the individual as resources and land, mobility, political agency, and self-affirmation are compromised. Through performance, video, photography, and installation, Alshaibi positions her own body as an allegorical site that makes the byproducts of war visible.

Born in Basra to an Iraqi father and Palestinian mother, Sama Alshaibi is based in Tucson where she is Chair and Associate Professor of Photography and Video Art at the University of Arizona. Alshaibi also holds a BA in Photography from Columbia College and an MFA in Photography, Video, and Media Arts from the University of Colorado. Her works have been collected by both public and private collections, including Nadour, Germany; The Barjeel Collection, Sharjah; The Rami Farook Collection, Dubai; and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Tunis, Tunisia.

Recently, Alshaibi has featured in solo and group exhibitions at FotoFest, Houston (2014); the Maldives Pavilion of the Venice Biennale (2013); Venice Art Gallery, Los Angeles (2013); Madrid Palestine Film Festival (2013); University of Southampton (2013); Edge of Arabia, London (2012); HilgerBROTKunsthalle, Vienna (2012); Institut Du Monde Arabe, Paris (2012); Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah (2012); Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai (2011); and Selma Feriani Gallery, London (2010). In 2015, her first monograph will be published by Aperture Foundation, New York in conjunction with a solo exhibition at Ayyam Gallery, London. 

A leading figure in contemporary Syrian art, Thaier Helal’s large mixed media works are considered at the forefront of contemporary abstraction in the Middle East. Drawing inspiration from the physical and sensory aspects of the world around him, Helal explores the dynamism of space as it is reshaped by the ebb and flow of society and culture. His canvases communicate movement and energy through explosions of colour, the meticulous division of the picture plane, and the repetitive layering of the surface. Although utilising the leitmotifs of contemporary painting, the artist’s deliberate approach is reminiscent of the formalism of Islamic art, which relies on units as part of a larger whole to communicate a sense of wonder when alluding to the sublime.

Recently, Helal has utilised images of the Syrian Army taken from news media in haunting compositions that isolate the mechanisms of warfare. Isolating such stark imagery against a black background, Helal confronts the abject reality that currently besieges Syrians while pointing to the increased militarisation of global society.

Born in Syria in 1967, Thaier Helal graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus before relocating to Sharjah in the 1990s, where he currently lives and works. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Al Burda International Award from the Emirati Ministry of Culture, Youth and Community Development (2008); the Grand Gold Award at the Contemporary Painting Biennial, Tehran (2005); the Award for Painting at the Sharjah International Biennial (1997) and the Distinguished Works Award at the 15th General Exhibition of the UAE Fine Arts Association (1996). In addition to his breakthroughs in abstraction, Helal has contributed to the development of regional art as a longtime faculty member of the University of Sharjah, Fine Arts College.

Selected solo exhibitions for the artist include Ayyam Gallery, Dubai, DIFC (2012); Ayyam Gallery Cairo (2011); Ayyam Gallery Beirut (2010); Ayyam Gallery Damascus (2010); Green Art Gallery, Dubai (2006, 2003); Cultural Foundation, Abu Dhabi (2002); Sharjah Art Museum (2000). His selected group exhibitions include Paris Abu Dhabi Art (2008); Iran Contemporary Painting Biennial, Tehran (2005); Imagining the Book International Biennale, Alexandria (2005); and the Sharjah Biennial (1997, 1995). 

Syrian artist Tammam Azzam creates a “hybrid form” of painting through the application of various media, arriving at interactions between surface and form that borrow and multiply as compositions evolve. Unconventional materials such as rope, clothespins, and other found objects are employed to create depth, texture, and space, achieving a striking balance between ordinary objects and the expanse of the picture plane despite a visible tension.

Following the outbreak of violence in Syria, Azzam turned to digital media to create visual composites of the conflict that have resonated with viewers. As such, Azzam’s images have circulated through various channels of the international art world and the political sphere, drawing attention to the humanitarian crisis that now surrounds Syrians. These recent images are informed by his interest in the interventionist potential of digital media and street art as powerful and direct forms of protest that are difficult to suppress. In early 2013, Azzam made worldwide headlines when his work Freedom Graffiti went viral on social media. Enlisting one of the most iconic works of art – Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss - to protest the country's suffering, he superimposed a recognizable image of love over the walls of war-torn Damascus. Belonging to the artist’s Syrian Museum series in which he places imagery taken from masterpieces of Western art history into photographs of scenes of devastation across Syria, the work juxtaposes some of the greatest achievements of humanity with the pain it is also capable of inflicting.

Born in Damascus in 1980, Tammam Azzam lives and works in Dubai. He received his formal training from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus with a concentration in oil painting. Recently, he has participated in solo and group exhibitions at such venues as Rush Arts, New York (2014); FotoFest Biennial, Houston (2014); Ayyam Gallery London (2013); the 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts, Slovenia (2013); Ayyam Gallery Al Quoz, Dubai (2012, 2009); Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2011). 

Lebanese artist and architect Nadim Karam’s multi-disciplinary approach incorporates painting, drawing, sculpture, and writing. Fusing various cultural influences, Karam’s works transcend social, political, and national borders, forming a unique pictorial language, replete with recurring symbols, and with its own original characters and narratives. They form an alphabet of sorts, in what is an ongoing, sometimes absurdist, exploration of the creative power of dreams.

Renowned for his public art and work in urban regeneration, Karam has most recently been lauded for his architectural plan The Cloud, which made international headlines for its revolutionary ideas on how to reconfigure public space amidst Dubai’s growing cityscape. Karam’s projects and installations are interventions that seek to animate cities as diverse as Melbourne, Prague, Dubai, Beirut, London, and Nara, Japan. These interventions often take the form of large-scale steel sculptures, described as ‘urban toys’ by the artist. For Karam, it is not only we, as humans, who need to dream, but our cities too – his urban toys are acts of whimsy and a rebellion against the soulless nature of so many modern spaces, bringing to life the environments around him. Says Karam: “Each urban toy has a message. An open message ready to be inhabited by stories which become mingled with history.”

Born in 1957 in Senegal, Nadim Karam lives and works in Beirut. He received a Bachelor of Architecture from the American University of Beirut (1982) and a Doctorate of Architecture from the University of Tokyo (1989). In 1996, he established Atelier Hapsitus (www.hapsitus.com), a satellite grouping of young Lebanese architects, and designers seeking to create an original urban vocabulary though large-scale art installation and architectural works for various cities worldwide. Karam’s work has appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide including Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris (2013), as well as biennales such as Venice, Liverpool, and Gwangju. The artist’s past publications include The Cloud, The Desert and The Arabian Breeze (2007); Urban Toys (2006) and Voyage (2000). In 2013 his monograph Stretching Thoughts was published by Booth-Clibborn Editions. 

Employing a multi-process method of working, Reza Lavasani’s work is based on drawings that are then turned into paintings or large-scale sculptures, which, due to their apparent solidity, at first appear to have been fashioned of metal or stone. A closer examination of the artist’s interests reveals a commitment to recovery, restoration, and reclamation, as well as an overarching vision that considers harmony and ecology, revealing his motivation for creating sculptures from pre-used paper.

Lavasani has the gift of combining elements as synergistic expressions from sources as diverse as religion, philosophy, mythology, Sufi thought, the poetry of Hafiz and Rumi as well as national history. Winged horses and the golden-eagles of Damavand from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (The Book of Kings) appear as sculptural manifestations, whereas evident in the artist’s two-dimensional works are motifs from Persian miniature painting and manuscript illumination, with the addition of fable-like elements such as the rendering of wind, waves, and animals in the paintings. Animal forms in metallic purple are captured mid-stride, set against a yellow or gold flecked background, and in other works angels are seen in supplication to fabled animals.

Born in 1962 in Tehran, Reza Lavasani received a Bachelor of Arts in Painting from the University of Tehran. Lavasani has exhibited widely in Iran and has participated in various international group exhibitions and art fairs including in Japan and Italy. 

Painter Youssef Dweik uses combinations of soft, textural colours to create a quiet harmony within his works, a technique he developed as a result of years of experimentation with different methods and raw materials. The elimination of traditional perspective that marks his compositions is indicative of a school of Palestinian art that emerged most profoundly in the 1990s with a collective of artists identified as the New Visions Group. Boycotting Israeli art supplies in protest of the occupation of Palestine, they turned to materials found in nature. The works that were created during this time often reject illusionism as a means of anchoring figures and objects, opting instead for flattened spaces divided into units or distinct sections. Referencing the compartments found in the traditional arts of Palestine, be it in the complex designs of embroidery or inlaid mother-of-pearl crafts, such definition of compositional space also provided a fluid narrative structure. In his mixed media work, Dweik achieves a balance between telling the complicated story of Palestine and the desire to reach high levels of formalism.

Youssef Dweik was born in Jerusalem in 1963 and presently resides in the UAE. He graduated from the Department of Fine Arts at Jordan’s Al-Yarmouk University in 1985. He is a member of UNESCO’s Association of International Artists, the Palestinian Artists League, and the United Arab Emirates League of Artists. Dweik has exhibited his work in solo and group shows throughout the Arab world and abroad. 

Employing washes of colour and delicately executed forms, Mona Moein Ansari’s paintings relate to an interest in offbeat things and characters. For the artist, the part-human caricatures of her paintings are inspired by the emotive signals of others and the objects she regularly encounters. Ansari’s long, thin creatures are frequently outfitted in black and white stripes and appear under the title of “puppets,” a detail that infers a comment on the charades and social posturing of contemporary society.

Mona Moein Ansari was born and raised in Tehran, Iran and currently lives in Dubai. In 2009, she graduated from Central Saint Martins University of Arts London, where she studied theater design for performance. Her work has been shown widely in Azadi Museum, Tehran, Palazzo Bufalini Citta Di Castello, Perugia, and at the Florence Biennale. 

Palestinian artist Oussama Diab applies a conceptual approach to painting by exploiting the stylistic variants of the medium as emotive prompts in order to explore how form can articulate the urgency of sociopolitical issues. In an age where digital media have taken a dominate role in filtering our everyday experiences and the construction of imagery has become integral to the negotiation of modern life, Diab addresses the contradictions and obstacles of political conflict, globalisation, and exile through playful symbolism, references to popular culture, iconic imagery, and narrative structures. With each new series he adopts a different painting style, reflecting the impermanent nature of art as it becomes increasingly conceptual and further dematerialised.

Born in 1977 in Damascus, Oussama Diab lives and works in Beirut. A graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus in 2002, he has featured in solo and group exhibitions throughout the region and is the recipient of numerous awards including the Shabab Young Artists exhibition in Syria. Solo shows include Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2012); Ayyam Gallery Beirut (2010-11); Ayyam Gallery Dubai (2010); Ayyam Gallery Damascus (2009). 

With a laboured approach to painting, Oussama Baalbaki frequently approaches difficult subject matter. Yet he is also drawn to the aesthetically pleasing or the stillness that exists amidst quiet moments in life. His more politically slanted canvases are at once striking and introspective, while his snapshots of the mundane seem to possess concealed narratives. In his landscapes unexpected elements such as electrical poles or derelict cars gain prominence, often becoming the focus of the paintings, and catching the viewer off guard.

Baalbaki has painted self-portraits with various household objects such as books, knives, and hair dryers since 2010. In this particular piece the artist is depicted lying in bed gripping a handful of paint brushes. The act of holding the brushes is very much an assertion of the artist’s identity as a painter, yet at the same time the subject’s gaze is ambivalent towards the viewer, directed to something outside of the frame of the painting as though unaware of the filtering of his self image. On his decision to create numerous self-portraits, Baalbaki explains that he prefers to use himself as a model whose features and gestures he is intimately familiar with. At the same time the artist reveals, “I feel as if [I am] drawing another person...an adjacent being,” in which the works come to “represent an alternate reality, which is refined of the “flaws, excesses and the paleness of reality.”

Oussama Baalbaki was born in Lebanon in 1978 and graduated with an honours degree from the Lebanese University’s School of Fine Arts in 2002. He has participated in several group exhibitions such as “Art Studio” under the supervision of the artist Nasser El-Soumi at Goethe Institute in Beirut in 1999, and the Lebanese Plastic Arts Exhibition in Algeria in 2007. His works were exhibited in the “Autumn Salon” of Sursock Museum in Beirut consecutively from the year 2003 until 2008. In 2010 the artist exhibited at Galerie Tanit, Munich, and at Galerie Tanit, Beirut in 2014. 

The sculptures, installations, and photographs of Iranian artist Farzad Kohan seek to address issues of migration and identity, surpassing the constructed boundaries of social divisions. As a manifestation of his desire to articulate the inner workings of such culture-defining phenomena, Kohan frequently utilises found materials as diverse as wood, coffee, milk, motor oil, and sand to evoke the seemingly mundane.

The artist’s recent collage works are comprised of layered newspaper advertisements that are first mounted on canvas then painted, creating a multidimensional tactility. Beneath the surface of his mixed media works are layers of the unseen, a formal detail alluding to the psychic spaces of experiential realities. Kohan states that his work is merely a reflection of how he sees the world around him, “Many find that life is a struggle of both the emotional and the physical...My art reflects what is often a simultaneous experience of both the struggle and beauty that comprises life. With my art, I communicate across cultural divides, language barriers, religion and gender. I’m a citizen of this world.”

Born in Tehran in 1967, Farzad Kohan lives and works in Los Angeles. The artist’s solo exhibitions include Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai in 2013 and Seyhoun Gallery, Los Angeles in 2006. His selected group exhibitions include Human Rights Awareness Tour, USA (2008); JFerrari Gallery, Los Angeles (2008); Eagle Rock Cultural Centre for Arts (2008); Phantom Galleries, Los Angeles (2007). 

Dominated by vivacious childlike figures in various scenarios, Mohannad Orabi’s previous paintings reflect his interest in the spontaneity of process and the liberation of form that emerges when art is created intuitively without fixed directives. Many of these mixed media canvases were painted as self-portraits, revealing the artist’s fascination with the evolution of consciousness in childhood and the wonder and whimsy of the formative years that first shape our comprehension of the world.

With the start of the Syrian uprising and the conflict that followed, Orabi adopted an increasingly realist approach to portraiture, drawing inspiration from the various forms of media that are currently forging a visual repository of the war. Martyr posters, facebook profile pictures, and other types of filtered or composed imagery serve as source material for portraits of Syrians under siege, displaced, and in exile, recording a side of the conflict that lies beyond its ideological divisions and political talking points. While the artist retains an interest in the socialisation processes of childhood, his own experiences of now living outside the country have led him to consider the ways in which visual culture, social media, and digital communication have become substitutes for what was once tangible.

Born in Damascus in 1977, Mohannad Orabi currently lives and works Dubai. Orabi graduated from the Faculty of Fine Art in Damascus in 2000 and won the first prize in The Syrian National Young Artists Exhibition in 2006. Solo exhibitions include Ayyam Gallery Jeddah (2013); Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2012); Ayyam Gallery Al Quoz, Dubai (2009); Ayyam Gallery Damascus (2008), Zara Gallery, Amman (2007); and Ishtar Gallery, Damascus (2006, 2004). 

Ahmad Moualla’s theatrical compositions have been indispensible to the allegorical and expressionist threads of contemporary painting that have distinguished Syrian art over the past three decades. In expansive settings reminiscent of staged performances, the artist’s faceless, anonymous characters exist as a unified force, moving in waves as though bodies charged by electric connections. Rendered in riotous brushmarks while engaging the tropes of classical painting, his mannerist canvases reflect the dissolution of reality that is often applied to mythical subject matter as an attempt to bridge the past and the present and the experiential with the subconscious. Such grand scenes driven by drama are often situated around a central event, for example a funeral procession or the sermon of an orator. Juxtaposing the alienation of solitude with frenzied collectivity, Moualla has produced weighty reflections on the nature of modern life.

As he built his oeuvre, however, these figures eventually disappeared, leaving an expressionist wasteland of text and brushwork that transports the viewer. The artist cites his early training in calligraphy as the basis for this second branch of work. With the start of the conflict in Syria, however, Moualla has returned to his operatic scenes.

Born in Syria in 1958, Ahmad Moualla studied at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1987 after pursuing undergraduate education at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus. Upon completing his training in France, he returned to Syria where he taught at his alma mater from 1989 until 1996, developing a significant following among his students and young artists. Since resettling in his native country, he has participated in a variety of exhibitions throughout the Middle East, Europe, and North America and has been given solo shows at some of the Arab world’s most prestigious galleries, namely Green Art Gallery (Dubai), Atassi Gallery (Damascus) and Sultan Gallery (Kuwait), gaining notoriety among fellow artists, critics and collectors across the region. 

A leading contemporary Syrian painter, Saad Yagan is widely known for chronicling the modern day experiences of Aleppo residents and their instinctive attachment to the centuries-old city. Yagan’s atmospheric paintings have followed two distinct tracts, and can be divided between scenes derived from ancient mythology and literature, such as his Gilgamesh and Arabian Nights series, and compositions exploring the morose café culture that hosts Syria’s recluses, alienated philosophers, and an assortment of other downtrodden clientele. Both narrative threads feature stylised figures whose elongated faces appear worn by time, adopting the lines and brushwork of their settings. Yet their muscular bodies, which appear to be patterned after the perception of hallowed bodies found in religious icons, are rendered with an aestheticised elegance.

Born in Aleppo, Syria in 1944, Saad Yagan began painting at age thirteen. In 1964 he graduated from the Plastic Arts Centre of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Aleppo and held his first solo exhibition at the city’s National Museum five years later. To date, he has exhibited in over one hundred exhibitions at home and abroad. In addition to his painting, he has served as a commentator for Syrian television, broadcasting a series of documentaries on art. Yagan has also lectured extensively in local universities. His works are housed in the National Museum of Damascus and the Syrian Ministry of Culture. The artist’s recent solo and group exhibitions have been held at Mark Hachem Gallery, Beirut (2014); Art House, Damascus (2011, 2009, 2008); Katzen Center for the Arts, Washington DC (2007); and Art Form Gallery, Montreal (2007). 

Although originally influenced by metaphysical approaches to art, contemporary Syrian artist Ghassan Sebai has developed an individual painting style that incorporates cubist elements and the muscular forms of early twentieth-century realism. In the artist’s symbolist compositions, figures, most often women, are set against sun-drenched landscapes or atmospheric environments, details that some historians have linked to memories of his childhood home in Homs near the Al Assi River. Mothers, goddesses, and muses are frequently shown with birds, fish, or other animals, hinting at a primal connection to the land. In the more than four decades marking his career, Sebai has continuously reflected on socio-political issues despite his allegorically driven aesthetic. Most recently he has painted large-scale compositions exploring the human cost of the Syrian conflict.

Born in Homs, Syria in 1939, Ghassan Sebai studied oil painting at the University of Alexandria, Egypt and later graduated from Higher Institute of Fine Arts in Paris with a specialization in engraving in 1970. In 1974 he returned to Syria where he taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus until 2002. His works are housed in the National Museum of Damascus, the Beiteddine Museum in Lebanon, and the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts. 

Ali Mokawas’ paintings often resemble etchings, as his limited palette and concentration on line work are emphasised by the subtle employment of contrasting colours. This approach to painting is inspired in part by the intent to capture the startling beauty of the world around him. His figurative compositions are expressionistic in nature and often monumental in subject, offering detailed imagery that is universal in scope.

Born in Latakia, Syria in 1955, Ali Mokawas graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus in 1978. Currently an instructor of art, he has exhibited throughout the Arab world, including at the Atassi Gallery in Damascus, Agial Gallery in Beirut, Green Art Gallery in Dubai, and Hewar Gallery in Riyadh. His work has also been shown in spaces throughout Europe. Throughout his career, Mokawas has participated in high profile events such as the Sharjah, Cairo, and Mediterranean Biennials. His works are housed in the Syrian Ministry of Culture and the Barjeel Art Foundation. 

The figures of Souad Mardam Bey’s paintings are often taken from real life. The artist has seen her subjects many times, either lurking around public spaces or speeding past her on the streets of the various locales where she has resided. Yet she does not simply reproduce snapshots of the everyday man and woman, instead she creates a cast of fantastical and fanciful characters who come forth in plush robes or modern clothing adorned in complex patterns. Inspired by world travels her mystical subjects are adorned in silks and velvets in shades of mahogany and plum. At times her protagonists are pictured with tropical birds, fish, or ducks, foregrounding their symbolic world. Additionally, a focus on texture imbues the artist’s gender ambiguous characters with melancholic personas. Their plush lips are sealed, fencing in their deepest secrets, while their eyes express an ethereal quality.

Of her work the artist states, “I do not seek to impose an idea upon spectators. People are free to decide what to see in the eyes of my portraits.”

Souad Mardam Bey was born in Damasacus, Syria and studied philosophy at the Lebanese University in Beirut. She also received her artistic training in Beirut and lived in Montreal, Canada for a few years before moving to Cairo in 2001. In Egypt, she has encountered a unique blend of cultures spanning centuries, fueling her artistic endeavours. Mardam Bey has exhibited in venues throughout the Arab world, Europe, and South America. 

Hossien Kashian is a miniature painter and a calligrapher. The artist’s calligraphic works range from those reminiscent of ancient scrolls, in which Farsi-Arabic script takes over the canvas in full, while in others the picture plane is divided into strict geometrical sections or quadrants that evoke the symmetry of Chaar Bagh often found in the design of Indo-Persian gardens. Other works depict word clusters as whirling or advancing masses utilising broad-spectrum colour palette, thus providing a contemporary take on a traditional art. Originally revered for its role in preservation of the Quran, calligraphy later became a major form of artistic expression in Islamic societies and the foundation for greater experiments in abstraction.

Hossein Kashian was born in Tehran in 1942 and is a graduate of the Iranian Calligraphy Association (1976). He has held more than eighty-four solo and group exhibitions locally and internationally, including in Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Algeria, Paris, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Switzerland, China, Dubai and the United States. Kashian has formerly served as Director of the Tehran Contemporary Art Museum, and was founder of Iranian Visual Arts. He has also worked as an art expert at the Visual Arts Center of the Ministry of Culture and Higher Education, Iran. 

Farideh Lashai was one of Iran’s most prominent contemporary artists. Prior to her death in 2013, her practice was increasingly focused on combinations of painting and animated projections in which real and imaginary characters journeyed through the abstract spaces of large canvases. Lashai played a pivotal role in the contemporary Iranian art scene and was co-founder of the seminal Neda group, a collective of female artists that was established in the 1990s.

In the conceptual grounding and abstracted compositional space of her works, the presence of nature is clearly discernible, appearing sometimes as an interwoven mass, a network of colours, and sometimes as geometrical colour forms. “I have never painted from nature; in the sense of painting a landscape I can look at. But I suppose I have painted by nature. The richness of nature amazes me, and amazement is the starting point for all artistic pursuits,” Lashai reflected in an interview with Canvas Magazine in 2007.

Born in 1944 in Rasht, Iran, Farideh Lashai was a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. She practiced painting since the late 1960s, and over the course of her forty-year career held twenty-five solo exhibitions and participated in more than eighty group exhibitions around the world. A version of Between the Motion / And the act / Falls the shadow, was exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery, London, curated by Ali Bakhtiari, with Magic of Persia, in October 2012. In 2013, ABBookness published her artist book, Catching the Moon, which was launched at JAMM Art, Dubai. In addition to her painting, she was an accomplished writer and translator. Lashai translated several plays by German playwright Bertolt Brecht while her final novel Shal Bamu became a bestseller, attracting the attention of Iranian literary circles. 

The paintings of contemporary Syrian artist Ghassan Nana depict a variety of subjects in compositions that rely on expressionist brushwork and incandescent hues in the creation of buoyant settings. Inspired by a range of themes, including ancient mythology and historical tableaus, Nana’s atmospheric paintings explore the multitude of experiences that inform both the past and the present, and are embodied in material culture. For the artist, such scenes are fashioned by “life, nature, history, people, and the world’s problems.” Utilising a painterly approach to depicting hovering “dreams,” his melodic brushstrokes guide the viewer’s eye across swaying forms as though positioned before a passing haze.

Ghassan Nana was born in Homs, Syria in 1953. He studied at the Plastic Arts Center in Homs (1971) and graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus in 1978. Nana has held solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe and the Arab world at such venues as Galerie Tanit, Beirut (2012); the Beirut Art Fair (2011); Tajalliyat Art Gallery, Damascus (2011); the National Museum of Damascus (2009); Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris (2008); Fateh Moudarres Atelier, Damascus (2002); Atassi Gallery, Damascus (1998); and the Cairo Biennial (1996). His works are housed in the National Museum of Damascus and the Syrian Ministry of Culture. 

As one of the Arab world’s prominent photojournalists, Ammar Abd Rabbo’s work has been published in leading and widely circulated publications, from Time Magazine to Paris Match, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and Asharq Al Awsat, where he signed more than sixty magazine covers. Spanning a twenty-year career, Rabbo’s portfolio includes war coverage in Iraq, Lebanon, and Libya, portraits of head of states, world-renowned celebrities such as Michael Jackson, as well as high profile events such as the Cannes Film Festival and Paris Fashion Week.

Born in Damascus in 1966, Rabbo lived in Libya and Lebanon before moving to France in 1978 after the intensification of the Lebanese Civil War. Prior to joining Sipa press agency in 1992, he studied political science at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques. He later left Sipa to create Balkis photo agency, which is now syndicated by Abaca Press. In 2012, Ammar Abd Rabbo held his first artistic exhibition entitled Coming Soon at Ayyam Gallery, Beirut. This exhibition transported the viewer beyond the wall of informality and provided a privileged look into one of life’s most intimate spheres: pregnancy. Follow the Leader, Rabbo’s second solo show held in Dubai, focused on the spontaneity of scenes capturing world leaders, providing a surprising glimpse into the banal side of politics. 

Majid Koorang Beheshti’s 2011 series, The City’s Notebook, takes a conceptual approach to photography with staged scenes in which architectural details situate his subjects in an apocalyptic urban setting. Angular rooftops, perforated tunnels, and geometric skeletons of edifices enclose the composition of each photograph, creating an abject mood. This bleak environment serves to emphasise the despair, chaos, destruction, and violence that has permeated Iran at certain intervals in its history. With direct references to an armed military presence, the bygone era of the Persian Empire, and various murders of the city’s youth, the images appear to grieve a lost metropolis, perhaps even a disappearing heritage, while underscoring the netting framework and enduring corridors that affix residents in this reality.

Born in 1967 in Isfahan, Iran, Majid Koorang Beheshti received a Bachelor of Arts in painting from Tehran’s Azad University. He has held solo exhibitions throughout Iran since 1998 and has been featured in group shows in Iran, the United States, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany since 2004, most notably the exhibition Persian Visions, Contemporary Photography from Iran, which toured the United States. In 2012 he held a solo exhibition with Ayyam Gallery Dubai. 

Lamya Gargash’s first artist book, Presence, is a photographic series documenting recently vacated houses and structures in the United Arab Emirates that have been abandoned or left for demolition, a reflective comment on the rapid modernisation of the Gulf. A native of Dubai, the artist witnessed the many phases of the Emirates’ development and has subsequently captured its ever-changing environments through the intimacy of domestic settings. Such scenes afford Gargash the subjectivity and visceral sense of encounter that is otherwise absent in understandings of modernisation and expansion. In The Orange Room (2007) relics of a bygone era allude to a missing human presence. The objects contained in the familiar yet private site of a bedroom appear in waiting as though unsure of their future.

Lamya Gargash was born in Dubai in 1982. She graduated from the American University of Sharjah in 2004 and received a Masters degree in Arts in Communication Design from Central Saint Martins in the UK in 2007.

Gargash has won a number of awards for her work in film and photography, including first prize in the Emirates Film Festival, as well as the Ibdaa Special Jury Award for her movie titled Wet Tiles. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions in the United Arab Emirates, Japan, and throughout Europe. In 2009, she was the featured artist of the Emirates’ inaugural national pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and also participated in the Sharjah Biennale. Earlier this year, she participated in the FotoFest Biennial in Houston, USA. 

In Alireza Fani’s works from 2008 to 2010, animal bones and fish appear as individual images as well as in multiples, superimposed onto scenes from daily life, and strategically placed upon or alongside the bodies of various male and female figures. As a child, Fani spent time both in the city and at his father’s farm where small details from nature such as “the goose wish bone [his] mother cooked” and “river fish” fascinated him. Years later these visuals find their way into Fani’s Tehran 88 series. Often invoking violence, for example in the presentation of partly cut-up fish in Tehran 88, such an artistic representation should not be described as social art but as “art responding to a particular situation, [in which the photographs] render the symptoms of a collective malady of a nation.” Bavand Behpoor in Tavoos (2010) further contextualises that Fani’s photographs offer “a visual solution to a collective silence,” in a society where citizens, especially men are often unable to speak of their suffering. As well, viewers may be steered to ask that like fish out of water, can there one day be hope for Fani’s country men and women to be united with a more yielding environment? One in which speech may be uttered without fear of being reprimanded.

Alireza Fani was born in 1975 in Tehran, Iran. He received a Diploma in Graphic Design from Chamran Technical High School of Gorgan, and in 1994 entered Azad University of Art and Architecture to further his studies in Graphic Design. He has worked as a graphic designer, art director, and freelance photographer since 1997, developing a focus in fine art photography in 2007. Fani has held several solo exhibitions in Iran while also participating in numerous group shows in Iran, China, Croatia, Poland, the United Kingdom, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, and India. 

Dubai-based Iranian artist Ramin Haerizadeh fought his way from the paths he was expected to follow to acquire a diverse education in the arts. Exploring photography, drawing, painting, film, animation, and collage, he creates multifaceted works that lyrically reclaim and transform found images into arrestingly witty but tragically troubling scenes of humanity.

Among multiple reproductions of Haerizadeh’s self, a lone, bearded, veiled, cross-dressed creature incessantly crops up. This creature reveals a culture of concealment, serving as both a metaphor for oppression and a container of safety. As winners re-write history, Haerizadeh, disillusioned, re-writes, camouflages, and twists given images and apparent truths. He mimics the hypocritical and grotesque manipulations that shape our disturbing world and forcibly alienate personal and collective memories. The inevitable repetition of abusive behaviour, on any scale, resonates throughout Haerizadeh’s carefully constructed montages of beasts, texts, icons, magazine clippings, and media images.

Born in 1975 in Tehran, Haerizadeh presented a collaborative exhibition with Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian at Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde in March 2012 entitled I Put It There, You Name It. Receiving wide international acclaim, his works featured in Charles Saatchi's Unveiled: New Art From the Middle East, London, 2009, Thaddeus Ropac's Be Crowned with Laurel in Oblivion, Paris, 2010, The Right to Protest at the Museum of the Seam, Jerusalem, and three solo shows at Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai as well as Gallery Nathalie Obadia, Paris in 2012. Beyond this, Haerizadeh has participated in group shows in Berlin, New York, Istanbul and Tehran, and has works in various institutional collections such as the Guggenheim Museum, Abu Dhabi, the British Museum, London, the Devi Art Foundation, Deli, the Rubell Collection, Florida, and the Rosenblum Collection, Paris. The artist presently lives and works with his brother Rokni Haerizadeh in Dubai. 

In Mohammad Khodashenas’ canvases vivid colours and text are layered with corporate logos, images from popular culture, and political graphics, resulting in complex patterns. Incorporating various templates of visual culture, ranging from stencil work and slogans to Calligraphy, Khodashenas chronicles the confrontations between the interwoven political networks fueling globalisation and the youth culture that is currently mobilising in resistance. The viewer is challenged to find meaning among letters, words and iconic images, all of which come together to create a multi-dimensional narrative. At the same time, one is also confronted with the oversaturation of imagery that marks our increasingly interconnected experiences through digital media.

Born in 1975 in Lahijan, Iranian graffiti artist Mohammad Khodeshenas was trained in graphic design, culminating in an undergraduate degree from the University of Tehran. He has exhibited in Iran, including at Azad Art Gallery and filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s workshop, and in the greater Middle East and Europe at such events and venues as Opera Gallery and the International Poster Biennial, Poland (2010). 

Zena Assi’s work on canvas draws inspiration from the relationships and conflicts between the individual and his spatial environment, society and its surroundings. Assi uses various mediums to document and explore the cultural and social changes of her native Lebanon. Through elongated, stylised figures who are often isolated or seemingly disconnected although depicted in groups, she alludes to the growing alienation, social fragmentation, and acute apathy that have accumulated as cultural roadblocks with each political rupture of Lebanon’s history. Her work takes shape in installation, animation, sculpture, and paintings on canvas.

Born in 1974 in Lebanon, Zena Assi lives and works in Beirut. She graduated with honors from l’Academie Libanaise des Beaux Arts (ALBA) after which she worked in advertising and taught in universities. Assi has exhibited in solo as well as group shows across Europe, the Middle East, and Northern America including at Art Sawa Gallery UAE (2013, 2009, 2008); Espace Claude Lemand, Paris (2012); Abu Dhabi Art Fair, UAE (2011); Shubbak Festival, UK (2011); Menasart Fair, Lebanon (2011); Subtitled APEAL Royal College of Art, UK (2011); Zoom Art Fair, USA (2010); and the Cairo Biennial (2010). Her work is part of the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah UAE, and the ALBA University. 

Babak Kazemi is a self-taught photographer living and working in Tehran. He was born and raised in the city of Ahvaz, which has served as a reccurring subject in the artist’s works. Ahvaz is a few kilometres away from the first-discovered oil well in the Middle East and one of several cities greatly affected by the Iran/Iraq war, which Kazemi witnessed during his childhood. Kazemi incorporates oil as a conceptual detail while also utilising it in the artistic process, frequently soaking his photographic prints in oil. Believing that many of the social and political problems in Iran stem from the discovery and production of oil in the region, Kazemi’s use of the unconventional medium signifies the sociopolitical context of his dystopian images.

Born in 1983 in Ahvaz, Iran, Babak Kazemi began his artistic career in 1996 and has exhibited in Iran and abroad, including at the group show 5+1, Homa Art Gallery, Tehran, Iran (2011); Naftoon, Tarahan-e-Azad Gallery, Tehran (2011); Television, Mohsen Gallery, Tehran (2011); Ministry of Nomads, London (2010); Revealing Truths, Sultan Gallery, Kuwait (2009); and Voice of Vision, Galerie Speos, Paris (2009). 

Immediately striking in artist Shurooq Amin’s work is the energy exuded by warm hues and painterly realism in the depiction of elaborately attired men and women whose taste for fashion signifies power and overstated social posturing. Amin’s figures, pictured against Louis Vuitton luggage or clad in embroidered abayas, are often depicted in various states of embrace, locking hands, playing cards, drinking whisky: their true identities hidden, both figuratively and literally, behind the imposition of masks or veils. The women in Amin’s canvases are ultimately subservient to their male counterparts, their invisible “puppet masters.” Through such imagery she explores the double standards, hypocrisy, and secret lives that exist beneath the surface of a conservative state. Her work confronts the hidden lives of the Arab patriarch: religious preacher, weekend alcoholic; political activist, well-known party-animal; conservative father, secret playboy. Amin’s examination of gender roles and performativity while portrayed in the Arab context is applicable to the dynamics of gender as they play out globally.

Born in 1967 in Kuwait, Shurooq Amin is an interdisciplinary art practitioner of Kuwaiti-Syrian background. In addition to being a visual artist with thirteen solo exhibitions to date, she is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet with a doctorate in Creative Writing and Ekphrasis from Warnborough College, England.

In 2013, Shurooq was awarded the title of “Artist of the Year” by the Arab Woman Awards, Kuwait chapter and was the first female Kuwaiti artist to be auctioned at Christie's in 2012. Amin’s paintings are housed in public and private collections in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Selected solo and group exhibitions for the artist include: Ayyam Gallery Al Quoz, Dubai (2013); Lahd Gallery, London (2011); CAN, New York (2010); Tilal Gallery, Kuwait (2010); 11th International Cairo Art Biennale (2008). A retrospective of her work was recently featured in the biannual art journal, Contemporary Practices: Visual Arts from the Middle East.

Kais Salman utilises satire to subvert the normalisation of greed, vanity, and ideological extremism that is rapidly defining our era. Each series of Salman’s work has sought to reflect a type of psychological violence that occurs when excess becomes rationalised and accepted by societies. Seeking to confront and exorcise sociocultural manifestations of such depravity, Salman taps into ugliness and abjection through intentionally hyperbolised imagery that is accentuated by punches of colour and aestheticised forms. Terrorism, consumerism, cosmetic surgery, religious fanaticism, imperialism, and the voyeurism of the digital age have all served as topics of Salman’s carnivalesque compositions.

Born in Tartous, Syria in 1976, Kais Salman lives and works in Beirut. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus in 2002. His paintings are currently housed in private collections throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. Solo and group exhibitions include the Alexandria Biennale (2014); Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2014, 2010); Ayyam Gallery Beirut 2014, 2012); Ayyam Gallery Al Quoz, Dubai (2014, 2011, 2010); Damascus Museum of Modern Art (2009); The Park Avenue Armory, New York (2008); Carthage Festival for Coast Mediterranean Sea Artists, Tunisia (2005). In May 2010, a work from his Fashion Series appeared on the cover of the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Edition magazine, a first for an Arab artist. 

Reflecting a meticulous draftsmanship that punctuates the canvas, Nazar Moosavinia’s surrealist compositions erupt as brooding tales of man on the brink of psychological implosion. Reminiscent of the subversively absurdist imagery of Hieronymus Bosch, Moosavinia creates a fantastical and nightmarish world in his series Recollection of a Hen (2011). In the darkly executed body of work a progressive role reversal from captive hen to captive human steers a hunt that alternates between confinement, confusion, and submission. Though muted in palette, a bold red features in every painting, along with the prominent inclusion of eggs carefully balanced on their points. Past readings of Moosavinia’s paintings have situated the artist among a new generation of Iranians that have utilised visual strategies to explore the increasingly Orwellian tactics of global powers and their impact on modern life.

Born in Abadan, Iran in 1979, Nazar Moosavinia received a Bachelor of Arts in Painting from Jahad University, a Master of Arts in Painting from Azad Art and Architecture University, Tehran, and is a longtime member of the Iranian Painters Society (SIP). Moosavinia has participated in solo and group shows since 2006 in Tehran, London, and Dubai 

Rezvan Sadeghzadeh’s anonymous female figures stand alongside oversized rocks and boulders, often dwarfed by the monolithic forms. Stones appear repeatedly throughout the artist’s works; they are not used merely as peripheral elements in a formal still life, or as background props in a landscape, but rather as organisms with a life and energy of their own, sometimes appearing centre stage to be studied at close range. Sadeghzadeh’s subjects are depicted with thin outlines in non-descript settings, an effect that further deconstructs and destabilises the narrative quality of figuration. Allowing the viewer to freely interpret the unifying threads of his work, the artist offers spaces where the subconscious mind can take over.

Born in Ardebil, Iran in 1964, Rezvan Sadeghzadeh presently lives and works in Tehran. He has participated in over one hundred group exhibitions in Iran, Japan, China, France, England, Korea and Kuwait and has held numerous solo exhibitions since 1983.

Sadeghzadeh is also the Director of the Painting Department at the University of Arts in Tehran. He was the winner of the Fourth Tehran Biennale of 1996 and the recipient of the Worldwide Competition for Iran in London (2000). He has also been awarded in the Second Biennale of Contemporary Painting of the Islamic World (2004) and the Seventh Tehran Biennale (2002). Selected solo exhibitions include Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2013), Mah Gallery, Tehran (2007), Golestan Gallery, Tehran (2004), Asar Gallery, Tehran (2001), Arian Gallery, Tehran (2000), Arian Gallery, Tehran (1997), 7 Samar Gallery, Tehran (1996), Golestan Gallery, Tehran (1996), and Kandloos Gallery, Tehran (1994).