Tabari Artspace is delighted to announce Hazem Harb Solo Contemporary Heritage.
Contemporary Heritage is mixed media, visual artist, Harb’s first solo at the gallery since 2015 and will bring together a fresh body of work the cuts across disciplines and continues to push the boundaries of the contemporary art framework. This new body of work sees the artist observe the notion of heritage as unfixed and fluid. Underscoring Palestinian academic, Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism whereby through the imposition of soft powers history is reshaped for various agendas, Harb observes that while transferred from generation-to-generation, heritage also collides with colonial discourses resulting in new meanings that subsume the stories of the original owners who are often forcibly absent. A consistent thread throughout Harb’s practice has been the preoccupation with the Palestinian people and their collective and subjective narratives which he investigates both in the literal sense - referring to archives and academic texts as the foundations of his work and in the sense of physical investigation through the deployment of his materials. The artist, in continual flow, oscillates between mediums, drawn to those which he maintains best convey the sentiments of each new concept. Harb has previously worked with film, photography, installation, collage and textile and now leans towards a fresh mode of representation that reconfigures the past. As well as a large-scale collage diptych in Harb’s now-ubiquitous contemporary collage format Contemporary Heritage will see the artist produce new works in relief form, transposing 1920s Palestinian archival imagery into etchings that come to form compelling contemporary artefacts much like those of the forgotten societies now resigned to museums. As the debate surrounding looted antiquities looms large in the west, Harb’s reliefs, presented as the findings of archaeologists, are at once preserving history but also highlighting the ease at which certain communities, absent from the rhetoric and its presentation, become reduced to a historical exhibit in a foreign land.
-ENDS
ABOUT HAZEM HARB
Born in 1980 in Gaza; Palestinian artist Hazem Harb currently lives between Rome, Italy and Dubai, UAE. Harb completed his MFA at The European Institute of Design, Rome, Italy in 2008. Some of Harb’s solo shows include: ‘The Invisible Landscape & Concrete Futures’ curated by Lara Khaldi, Salsali Private Museum, Dubai, March 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, A.M. Qattan Foundation, London, UK 2010. He has also participated in numerous international group exhibitions some of which are: Active Forms Sharjah Art Foundation 2018; El Beit, Tabari art space 2018; CHERS AMIS (DEAR FRIENDS) 2016 Centre Pompidou Museum Paris 2007; The absence of paths, Tunisian Pavilion, 57th Biennale di Venezia 2017; The armory Show, New York 2016; A View From Inside, FotoFest Houston Biennial Houston USA 2014; and Sphere 6, Galleria Continua’s Le Moulin, France 2013 and 2014; Common Grounds, Villa Stuck Museum, Munich 2015; The Written City, Brugge City Hall, Belgium 2015; Passaggio di tempo, Luigi Pigorini Museum Rome Italy 2008. Harb was awarded a residency at The Delfina Foundation, London; Cite des Arts, Paris and Satellite, Dubai. His work is in the collections of The British Museum, Sharjah Art Foundation, Centre Pompidou Museum, The Oriental Museum, Durham, Salsali Private Museum, Jens faurschou Foundation Copenhagen.
