Mataf, Qatar: The Arab Museum of Modern Art is exhibiting works by Samia Halaby that were supposed to appear in a canceled survey held at Indiana University last year.
In December 2023, the school’s Eskenazi Art Museum canceled an exhibition of the Palestinian artist, citing “security reasons.” The show was canceled a month before it opened at the university’s Eskenazi Art Museum; Halabi, who was 87 at the time of the cancellation, earned his master’s degree at the university and later taught there. Halabi noted at the time that the cancellation came “at a time when millions of Palestinian civilians in Gaza are being massacred, starved and displaced.”
In 2024, the Michigan State University Museum held an exhibition of some of her works. Halabi also received a special mention for his participation in that year’s Venice Biennale.
Mataf is now hosting a display of Halabi’s paintings, including seven of the 35 works on display in the Indiana exhibition. Halabi’s work appears in the first gallery of the just-opened exhibition “We Refuse_d,” curated by Vasif Kortun. The gallery also includes a piece that appears in the Michigan exhibition.
The nine Halabi works in the Mathaf exhibition are all abstract paintings, created between 1980 and 2024. including paintings from 1989 global uprising,in new york times According to reports, it had “never been seen before” before the planned Indiana show. Mathaf also exhibits paintings from 2024 Massacre of innocents in Gaza. The largest works are massive transition (1988-98), spans the entire wall.
The 1999 painting is a work of art that will not appear in the Indiana exhibit red number onethis is Mathaf’s collection.
Kotun said the gallery intentionally used lighting and wall colors to mimic how the exhibit would be displayed at the Eskenazi Museum. “It pretends to be an exhibition she has there,” he said. Halaby, who lives in New York, attended the opening of the Mathaf exhibition on Thursday night after participating in a panel discussion titled “Forms of Resistance: Palestinian Art Today” with Palestinian artists Taysir Batniji and Dima Srouji. On the panels, Halabi connects her abstract paintings to nature and craftsmanship and distinguishes them from her political activism. “Some people ask me ‘Where does Palestine fit into your work?’… I didn’t want to create a painting that was politically sound so that galleries would approve it and people would look at it. To me it wasn’t political. I made “very blunt posters” about the political situation in Palestine.
“We Refuse_d” includes works by other artists canceled in the past two years, including Palestinian filmmaker and sculptor Jumana Manna, whose exhibition at the Kunsthalle Heidelberg in Germany was canceled in October 2023.
Halabi’s art has recently attracted considerable interest in museums and markets. Her digital artwork is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
