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Art investment in the MENA region is evolving rapidly, blending cultural insight with strong market growth.

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ADAI champions artists from across the Middle East and North Africa

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ADAI works with artists across the Middle East and North Africa to ensure their work is seen, understood, and contextualized. Representation on ADAI means supporting artists through curated visibility, research, and digital presentation, connecting their work to audiences, exhibitions, and broader cultural conversations.

Artists featured on ADAI are not exclusively signed or commercially represented— instead, ADAI provides a platform to showcase your practice, highlight your perspective, and situate your work within the evolving landscape of MENA art.

By representing your work on ADAI, you gain access to:

  • Curated profiles that highlight your artistic journey
  • Opportunities for exposure in exhibitions, publications, and online showcases
  • Connection to audiences, researchers, and institutions interested in MENA art

Representation is about visibility, context, and community - helping your art reach the right audiences while respecting your autonomy as an artist."

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Ancient
ANCIENT & ISLAMIC
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Modern Art
MODERN ART &
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Contemporary Voices
CONTEMPORARY
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TODAY)
A Full Journey
A FULL JOURNEY
(PAST → PRESENT)

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Founders of Arab Modernism (1920–1940)

Often referred to as the era of Al-Ruwad (The Pioneers), this period marks the birth of modern Arab art. Many of these artists were sent on government-sponsored scholarships to study in European capitals like Paris and Rome. Upon returning home, they blended Western academic techniques (such as Impressionism and Realism) with local subjects, landscapes, and the emerging concept of national identity.

Top Artists:

  • Artwork Patterns
    Mahmoud Sa'id (Egypt)
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    Moustafa Farroukh (Lebanon)
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    Mohammed Naghi (Egypt)
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    Habib Srour (Lebanon)
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    Mahmoud Mokhtar (Egypt - pioneer of modern Egyptian sculpture)
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    Omar Onsi (Lebanon)
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National Movements & Abstract Innovation (1950–1970)

Following World War II, as Arab nations gained independence from colonial powers, artists sought to break away from European academicism to forge distinctly localized modernisms. This era saw the formation of major artist collectives, such as the Baghdad Group for Modern Art and the Contemporary Art Group in Cairo. Pan-Arabism, decolonization, and the revival of ancient heritage (like Pharaonic or Mesopotamian motifs) were massive drivers of this era.

Top Artists:

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    Jewad Selim (Iraq)
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    Faik Hassan (Iraq)
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    Hamed Ewais (Egypt)
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    Saloua Raouda Choucair (Lebanon)
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Figurative Expression & Political Engagement (1960–1980)

This period was heavily defined by regional political turmoil, most notably the 1967 Six-Day War (the Naksa or 'setback'), the Palestinian exodus, and the Lebanese Civil War. Art became a crucial tool for resistance, political commentary, and documenting human suffering. Existential angst and national trauma led to an emotionally charged, often somber, figurative expressionism.

Top Artists:

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    Ismail Shammout (Palestine)
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    Leila Nasir (Syria)
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    Sliman Mansour (Palestine)
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    Samia Halaby (Palestine)
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    Dia Azzawi (Iraq)
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Hurufiyya & Abstraction with Cultural Identity (1960–1990)

The Hurufiyya (Letterism) movement is arguably the most significant and cohesive modernist movement to emerge from the Arab world. Artists deconstructed Arabic calligraphy, liberating the letters from their linguistic and religious functions to use them as purely abstract, rhythmic, and visual elements. This allowed them to engage with global abstract expressionism while remaining deeply rooted in Islamic and Arab heritage.

Top Artists:

  • Artwork Patterns
    Shakir Hassan Al Said (Iraq)
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    Kamal Boullata (Palestine)
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    Madiha Umar (Iraq/Syria - widely considered a pioneer who started exploring this in the 1940s)
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    Ibrahim El-Salahi (Sudan)
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Contemporary & Transnational Voices (1990–2020)

Driven by globalization, the diaspora experience, and new technologies, Arab art in this era expanded well beyond traditional painting and sculpture. It became heavily characterized by video, photography, installation, and performance art. Operating on a global stage, these artists tackle complex themes of post-colonialism, migration, memory, borders, and gender identity.

Top Artists:

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    Mona Hatoum (Palestine/UK)
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    Yto Barrada (Morocco/France)
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    Wael Shawky (Egypt)
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    Akram Zaatari (Lebanon)
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Memoryscape: Contemporary Visions Across the Arab Diaspora

Memoryscape: Contemporary Visions Across the Arab Diaspora

Artbooth Gallery is pleased to present Memoryscape, an exhibition bringing together six remarkable contemporary artists of Arab descent: Gilbert Halaby, Hanibal Srouji, Hussein Baalbaki, Richard Hearns, Sarah Alagroobi, and Soraya Abu Naba’a. The exhibition will be on view from March 12 to April 26,

Artbooth Gallery is pleased to present Memoryscape, an exhibition bringing together six remarkable contemporary artists of Arab descent: Gilbert Halaby, Hanibal Srouji, Hussein Baalbaki, Richard Hearns, Sarah Alagroobi, and Soraya Abu Naba’a. The exhibition will be on view from March 12 to April 26, 2026, offering a contemplative journey through landscapes of both place and memory.

At the heart of Memoryscape lies a shared inquiry into how our surroundings shape, hold, and recall our histories. For these artists, the landscape is more than scenery, it is an archive of experience, a repository of emotion, and a mirror of identity. Through abstraction, gestural mark making, layered textures, and multidisciplinary approaches, each artist transforms memory into visual language.

Gilbert Halaby’s paintings read like an autobiographical map. His canvases, constructed from bold geometries and vibrant color blocks, echo the fields, homes, and light of his Levantine childhood. His canvases, shaped by color blocks and flat planes, evoke poppy filled valleys and sunlit homes, balancing abstraction with the narrative weight of memory. The interplay of light, shadow, and color in Halaby’s work creates a visual language that is both intimate and universal.

Hanibal Srouji, known for his textured surfaces and poetic compositions, balances abstraction with traces of the familiar. His signature blow torch technique creates delicate marks that evoke both the scars of history and the quiet lyricism of nature. His vertical lines, at once musical and confining, reference human resilience and vulnerability, while his contemplative landscapes suggest the passage of time and the persistence of memory, particularly in the context of Beirut’s troubled past.

Hussein Baalbaki’s work offers an immersive encounter with memory as a physical presence. Thick layers of medium, often carved and shaped rather than brushed, create a tactile landscape of time and introspection. His canvases speak in whispers, revealing the silent echoes of human experience and inviting viewers to navigate thresholds between presence and absence. Baalbaki’s art is at once intimate and monumental, a meditation on how memory sediments itself into the textures of our lives.

Richard Hearns brings a dual heritage to his explorations of landscape, bridging the ancient terrains of Ireland with the urban and cultural memories of Beirut. His gestural abstractions and figurative works merge spontaneity with precision, marking the space between restraint and freedom. In Hearns’ hands, landscapes are living entities prismatic, rhythmic, and imbued with the energy of both earth and memory.

Sarah Alagroobi’s multidisciplinary practice examines identity and place within postcolonial and\ntransnational contexts. Her work extends abstraction into spaces of cultural reflection, using fragmentation as a site of reconstruction and hybridity as a form of resilience. Through painting and installation, Alagroobi navigates the terrains of memory and identity, creating works that resonate with both personal and collective histories.

Soraya Abu Naba’a’s work is informed by her lived experience across the Caribbean, the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. She approaches identity as something shaped through movement, material, and sensory memory. Her visual language integrates abstraction, traditional craft, digital aesthetics, and ecological consciousness. Accumulated line work gives shape to petals, textiles unfold as terrains, and craft functions as both archive and continuity, making memory tangible through form and texture.

Together, these six artists invite audiences to reflect on the landscapes that inhabit us, both those we have lived in and those we carry within. Memoryscape is an exploration of memory as terrain, a dialogue between place and self, and an invitation to engage with art that resonates beyond the visual, into the emotional and historical.