In Transit experience at Artbooth Gallery leaves enduring anguish

A group exhibition (July 9 — Aug. 31) titled In Transit is on at Artbooth Gallery Abu Dhabi, featuring works by Wadeei Khaled, Ahmad El Badawi, Bahram Hajou, Hanibal Srouji, Jamal Bassiouni, Rania Amoudi, and Yervant Hawarian. The show presents a cross generational and cross disciplinary dialogue between artists whose practices span abstraction, figuration, and visual experimentation. In Transit serves as both introduction and continuity, bringing together artists who will be featured in upcoming exhibitions throughout the year, alongside others whose works have previously been shown.

The exhibition reflects a curatorial intention to trace evolving artistic narratives, while highlighting recurring themes of memory, identity and displacement, through visual perception. In Transit aims - and succeeds - in weaving an intricate narrative of belonging and memory, through lived experiences.

The artistic dialogue begins with the work of Wadeei Khaled, a Palestinian artist based in Ramallah. Rooted in themes of homeland, identity, and memory, Khaled’s work draws from personal and collective narratives. His upbringing in a refugee camp, along with his engagement with Palestinian cultural heritage, informs a visual language that brings together stories of belonging, resilience, and displacement.

Jamal Bassiouni's The Encounter of Silence.

Wadeei was born in Al-Arroub Refugee Camp in 1986, and during his early childhood, colours had become his favorite companions. The first milestone in his artistic career came at the age of 13, when he held an art exhibition in Al-Arroub. Later, he began to explore the possibilities of painting his art directly on the walls of the camp. Wadeei eventually obtained a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Al-Quds University and since then, has participated in many local and international exhibitions.

Impressionists were among Wadeei’s main inspiration in art school. Like them, he enjoys playing with light, colours, and shadows. “It is a logical, scientific school that analyses colour, shadows, and sunlight,” he explains. “You find yourself drawing as though you were solving mathematical or physics equations – in addition to producing a beautiful piece of art.” Wadeei’s passion as an artist is driven by his strong connection with the landscape. Specifically, he explores the place where he lives, his home country, the land of Canaan. In his various works, he reflects on the Canaanite landscape, its zigzag details, and the olive trees that for centuries have not only provided livelihoods for many Palestinians, but also inspired numerous traditional and popular stories.

Oil on canvas work titled Yafa.

The intimate focus on Palestinian identity and resilience is deeply mirrored in the oil paintings of Rania Amoudi. Also based in Ramallah, Amoudi focuses her practice on illuminating the multifaceted personal and collective lives of Palestinian women, creating a vital arena for global empathy and dialogue that complements Khaled’s poetic exploration of homeland. Amoudi, born in 1978 in Saudi Arabia, obtained a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Najah University, Palestine, in 2002. Her art is characterised by vivid colours and attention to detail, trying to bring life to the intimate settings of Palestinian, and more particularly women’s, daily lives to depict as well as foster a space for reflection, dialogue, and connection.

While Khaled and Amoudi ground their narratives in the textures of daily life and enduring identity, the exhibition expands into profound reflections on conflict and displacement through an interaction between Syrian and Lebanese histories. The powerful figurative works of internationally recognised Syrian-Kurdish painter Bahram Hajou, educated in Germany under Norbert Tadeusz, use the expressive lines of German Expressionism to probe the psychological depths of solitude and human connection.

The emotional gravity finds a visceral, structural parallel in the abstract, materially experimental canvases of Lebanese artist Hanibal Srouji. Drawing directly from his experience during the Lebanese Civil War, Srouji uses a blowtorch to burn, cut, and puncture his surfaces, turning the canvas into a scarred urban landscape that echoes the architectural trauma of Beirut, while balancing the tension between destruction and renewal. The themes of time, history and perception shift from the material to the conceptual as the exhibition transitions into the realms of myth, media, and visual structure. The storied city of Alexandria serves as the catalyst for Jamal Bassiouni, whose highly honoured graduation work on chromatic harmony translates into canvases where time behaves as a spiral, blending the echo of ancient coastal myths with the breath of new mornings.

Wadeei Khaled's work A Message to My Mother.

This inquiry into form and the layers of history is shared by Egyptian visual artist, Ahmad El Badawi. Working as an assistant professor in Cairo, El Badawi balances documentary sensitivity with conceptual experimentation, using layered narratives and abstraction to interrogate the very boundaries of visual perception. The intersection of documentary history and fine art culminates in the legendary practice of Yervant Hawarian, a Lebanese-Syrian-Armenian painter, who began his career at age 15, painting monumental affiches for Beirut movie theatres.

Chronicling Arab cinema’s Golden Age through bold, graphic figuration and vivid cinematic compositions, Hawarian’s monumental output bridges popular culture and institutional fine art, completing the exhibition’s journey through time, memory, and the apparent transience of human expression. In Transit positions the artists in a shared space of movement and transformation. It reflects on artistic practice as an ongoing passage between geographies, histories, mediums and identities, offering audiences an opportunity to encounter diverse yet interconnected visual narratives.

Founded in 2019 by Roger El Khoury, Artbooth Gallery is dedicated to fostering cross-cultural artistic dialogue through exhibition programmes. With spaces in Abu Dhabi and Seoul, the gallery supports both emerging and established artists, presenting cutting edge and critically engaged contemporary art from around the world.