BBC News published Alan Johnston's feature Art imitates life in Gaza on 17 June 2004, a correspondent report from Gaza on the then 24 year old Palestinian painter Hazem Harb.
Johnston describes work made as Israeli forces moved through Rafah, and Harb's own account of picking up a brush and dark colours in the moment those events were unfolding. The paintings include a series of female nudes, some of them pregnant, that Harb links to vulnerability and to what he called the barbarity inflicted on the camp, as well as abstract images of refugee women and broken ladders. He says that to be a Palestinian is to be part of the conflict, and that he is also trying to show a culture and a creativity that is not only war. The piece records a forthcoming exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, and earlier presentations in France and Italy. It does not name the gallery; this is early in his career.
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Tabari represents Hazem Harb.
