DUBAI: Here are three highlights from Nabil Anani’s ‘The Land and I,’ which runs at Zawyeh Gallery in Dubai from Sept. 29 until Jan. 12.
The latest solo exhibition from the octogenarian Ramallah-based artist features a host of new works, the central focus of which is, as the name suggests, the land. But his colorful landscape paintings are not realistic portrayals of Ramallah and Palestine, rather they celebrate the country that Nabil dreams of — one in harmony with “nature, without checkpoints, cement barriers, or settlements,” as the gallery explains in the show brochure. For Anani, the brochure states, “the Palestinian land is not just a background, but an active participant in the narration of the story of Palestine that concludes with emancipation.
” His paintings, it continues, “show an organic relationship between Palestinians and nature, one that has been disrupted by occupation.” These portrayals of idyllic pastoral scenes serve, according to the brochure, “as a meditation and reimagination of Palestine as a living being, something that breathes and moves, reflecting a strong bond between the geography and the people. (Anani) erases the borders between the people and the landscape they live in, making them one unit with a shared history, present, and future.
For him, the land is a witness to the Palestinian struggle.”.