DUBAI: ‘Sliman Mansour: Limited Edition’ runs until Nov. 12 at Ramallah’s Zawyeh Gallery - here are three highlights from the show.
‘Camel of Hardship’
The 76-year-old painter Sliman Mansour is a seminal figure in Palestinian contemporary art. This exhibition brings together some of his most important works of the past five decades. This piece from 1973, depicting an old porter carrying Jerusalem on his back is perhaps his most famous, and typifies his early work, which often featured peasants and women in traditional dress.
‘Orange Fields’
Mansour’s has focused on the Palestinian struggle throughout his career, and his work exemplifies his deep connection to the land in which — and on which — he was born. This piece is one of numerous rural scenes in the show in which women are the focus. “All the women in Mansour’s paintings wear embroidered Palestinian dresses, each with different designs,” the gallery states in its catalogue. This shows the “time, research, and effort invested by the artist.”
'The Immigrant’
This 2017 piece shows how Mansour’s recent works have focused on individual figures to “convey the different states of exhausting anticipation or loss resulting from his experience of living under occupation” and on “contradictions between the focal characters and their contexts.”
