Artist unwraps gauze from Gaza to convey dark, fragile reality of human suffering
▶ Hazem Harb uses familiar material to express the brutalities of surviving in his home city,
Hazem Harb’s latest solo exhibition, Gauze, is a journey into his past and recent works that reimagine facets of reality connected to his homeland, Palestine. Spread across two different spaces, it includes newly produced works and retrospective pieces dating back more than 25 years.
They not only reveal the diversity of Harb’s chosen mediums, from charcoal and acrylic to gauze and collage, but also the multifaceted expressions of identity throughout his career as a visual artist.
Curated by Munira Al Sayegh, founder of Dirwaza Curatorial Lab, the exhibition at Tabari Artspace in Dubai also marks a return for Harb to the use of gauze as a material within the context of varying Palestinian iconographies and narratives.
“The new works presented in this exhibition, using both charcoal and gauze, mark a departure from my contemporary approach to collage,” Harb tells The National.
“These new works are visceral and my physical reaction to and way of synthesising the anguish of recent months.”
Other new works in the exhibition include the circular acrylic collages, Watermelon I and II, where Harb has restored images of a watermelon from a 1917 fresco found in a home in Nazareth.
There is also The Last Escape, a rectangular piece that overlays a photograph from Harb’s family visit to Gaza with Arabic text that translates to “The Last Escape”.
Harb’s practice has taken a drastic turn since the Gaza conflict started. As a Gazan native with family members still residing there, he could not create art the way he has been previously, he says.
The meticulously crafted collages of archival images, which his practice has leaned towards in the past, are replaced with expressive and much darker works.
Dystopia is not a Noun, the series he presented at Abu Dhabi Art in November, showcased eight large-scale drawings and a sculpture. Disfigured bodies twisting and writhing from out of demolished homes, drawn with expressive charcoal gestures, were harrowing.
“Everything has changed,” Harb told The National at the time. “My mind, my studio, my desk, my materials, my personal life, my professional life, my attitude, my approach as an artist, everything has changed.”
Dystopia is not a Noun was a return to materiality for him.
Seven additional works from the same series that were not shown last year are showcased in this exhibition.
Harb’s return to materiality is further showcased in his latest piece, Gauze #22, a work that includes 14 framed pieces of gauze set against fine art cardboard.
In 2004, during Harb’s early years as an artist in Gaza, gauze was his unexpected artistic medium.
The translucent, thin fabric created through a loose open weave is often used for clothing materials, medical dressings, bookbinding and by artists for sculpting and mixed media artwork.
Gauze, as the name suggests, is also a material that originates from Gaza.
It is a poetic and poignant reality that Harb connects to his national and cultural identity, especially to the time when he was a young artist. “I used gauze in my experiments as both a material for sculpting and as a blank canvas,” Harb says. “It formed the backdrop for my personal resistance, which has always been expressed through my art during the suffering of my people that defined my youth.”
Two decades later, as Harb returns to his expressionistic method of creating and making meaning through art, his current gauze creations are like his charcoal drawings – a compelling and stark reminder of the fragility and reality of human life.
For this exhibition, Harb has laid the gauze on brown fine art cardboard that feels both random and intentional.
Bodies appear to float and yet are still and lifeless. The gauze bodies are laid down in rectangular frames that sit incredibly close to one another in the small backroom of the gallery, where the lighting adds an intimate and closedoff experience. The artworks’ frames act as both windows and burial plots.
The gauze is also a reference to the kafan, which is the white cloth that traditionally shrouds bodies before burials in Islamic families.
Here, Harb presents a more subtle but equally powerful means to describe the imagery of Palestinian corpses in Gaza posted across social media since October 7.
Harb elaborates that his return to the use of gauze is a means to “unearth the untold stories embedded in my city and to illuminate the genocide that has impacted my people”.
His use of gauze, almost like a painterly material that depicts floating bodies, becomes a confronting and compelling message that connects the realities of Palestinians to a solitary space.
Everything has changed. My mind, my studio, my desk, my materials, my personal life, my attitude, my approach as an artist HAZEM HARB
Artist