August 1: Opening of a Solo Exhibition for Khaled Hourani at Zawyeh Gallery – Ramallah

SadaNews - Zawyeh Gallery in Ramallah will open a solo exhibition for artist Khaled Hourani titled 1030+ on August 1. In this exhibition, he presents human scenes from Gaza within an imaginative proposal where children, men, and women are temporarily lifted into the sky above the clouds until the war ends. Hourani highlights the extent of destruction that has affected humanity in Gaza during the ongoing days of annihilation since October 2023, celebrating the lives of those who carry stories, lives, and unfulfilled dreams. The title of the exhibition refers to the number of days that have passed since the start of the annihilation, massacres, and destruction until today.

Hourani says: "These works are not about war or life as events, but about humanity after the events have receded, if they ever have, and about its existence suspended between earth and sky, where the body remains a witness, and the shared air is the last link between us."

Hourani's paintings are based on photographs from Gaza, from which he erases everything to keep only the most important: the people, children, and faces. He captures movements with precision; we see him painting those who carry bags of flour or food or backpacks, a father carefully embracing his child, families moving from place to place, and displaced women exhausted by their long journey, sitting on clouds as if they were on a swing between life and death. He paints clothing with its folds, features with fine details, and movements with fluidity, transforming the ordinary into the sacred, and the forgotten into the eternal.

Hourani evokes familiar symbols, some of which are linked to a long history of the United Nations in the refugee camps in Gaza, within critical approaches to the targeting of food distribution and the destruction of educational institutions. He also presents new symbols, some associated with death, such as the yellow line with its cubes suggesting a continuous extension that swallows the land and redraws the geography of loss and displacement. The exhibition opens a horizon for dreams in a time of suffocation and proposes an alternative sky that can be sought for shelter until the war ends.

The exhibition will open next Saturday at 5 PM and will continue daily (except Fridays) until October 1, 2026, from 10 AM to 6 PM, at Zawyeh Gallery – Ramallah.