"I have long been drawn to surfaces, materials, and artefacts that bear witness to time and summon its weight. Previously, my work was often produced at a distance, centered around collective narratives and cultural memory. Here, I invite you into my Gaza home—to observe the peeling walls that embody histories beneath, fragments of spaces that hold memory long after their occupants have gone. This work is an intimate reflection on lingering traces, on what remains in absence.
My home in Gaza exists in layers, each one concealing and revealing a different moment in time—paint worn down to expose past lives, past choices, past hands that shaped and animated the space. 'Not There, Yet Felt' is my attempt to articulate the sensation of being tethered to a place that is both intimately familiar and impossibly distant. Through collage, installation, and portraiture, I peel back not just physical layers but also emotional and historical ones—uncovering what is felt even when it can no longer be seen."
Not There, Yet Felt, takes peeling as a central metaphor—both literal and symbolic—to reveal layered memories and histories embedded within the walls of Hazem Harb's Gaza home. Unlike Harb's earlier works that centred around collective narratives, this new body of work is highly personal and intimate, drawing viewers into the artist's own lived environment and reflecting his sense of disembodiment, a feeling of being simultaneously connected to and distanced from his home. Through evocative collage, neon installation, and a poignant self-portrait, Harb subtly but powerfully raises themes of displacement, memory, and our emotional and physical connections to home.
Central to the exhibition is the neon installation Hope is Power, with ‘Power’ flickering intermittently, like the pulse of a beating heart - a signal of hope, life and possibility. Four collages on wood surround this centrepiece, mounted upon a flesh-hued wall. Derived from photographs of peeling walls captured by a journalist in Gaza, Harb’s collages reveal hidden strata of colour—soft pink, faded blue, deep burgundy—each layer reflecting decades of familial life, shifting aesthetics, and the testimonies of past occupants. The artist posits the question to the audience: “If these walls could talk, what might they say?”
Harb’s collages, reconnecting displaced bodies to their former spaces, abstract figures appear to emerge from fragmented surfaces, reconstructing disrupted narratives and repairing the sense of fracturedness felt by those in diaspora, like the artist.
In a second gallery space, archival works from 2005—produced two decades ago while Hazem Harb was a student in Italy, newly displaced from Gaza—enter into charged dialogue with his contemporary practice. These early mixed-media pieces, rendered on coarse hessian, feature abstracted figurative forms in various states of emergence and erosion. Now, shown alongside his recent works, they acquire a renewed intensity, as if the present has peeled back to reveal the outlines of an earlier self.
These works suggest a continuum. The same concerns—of fragmentation, layering, and the morphing of the human figure—persist. What changes is the tone: the archival works hum with immediacy, shaped by the dislocation of exile, while Harb’s recent meditations offer a reckoning with form and memory.
The exhibition also features a poignant self-portrait from Harb’s ongoing Gauze series. Rendered at life-size, it hovers between presence and absence, encapsulating a sense of dislocation and personal vulnerability. The artist’s choice of material, gauze, is at once fragile and protective, evoking the tension between healing and pain and the notion of repair.
