Tim Cornwell's survey for Middle East Eye of how artists across the region responded to the first Covid lockdowns includes Hazem Harb and his solo exhibition Contemporary Heritage at Tabari.
The feature opens with a line attributed to Picasso, "Without great solitude, no serious work is possible", quoted by an Istanbul gallery that, like dozens worldwide, had closed its doors. Cornwell then visits artists from across the Middle East who were finding ways to keep working, sharing and exhibiting while galleries and museums stayed shut.
Hazem Harb had just finished hanging Contemporary Heritage at Tabari, the result of six months of work, when lockdown took hold. "As a Palestinian I'm used to cultivating creativity in restrictive circumstances," he told the writer. Rather than lament the delay, he prepared a virtual tour of the exhibition so it could be seen online, and spent the weeks drawing and researching in his Dubai studio. Cornwell describes him as a rising star whose reflections on Palestinian life have been shown around the world, and the article credits images of his work to the gallery.
Contemporary Heritage brought together Harb's collages built from his archive of photographs, maps and documents of Palestine, works that the Gulf News review of the same show describes as presenting heritage as unfixed and fluid. Harb, born in Gaza in 1980, lives and works in Dubai and has exhibited with Tabari since 2018.
