Strokes to Narrate the Soul: Contemporary Painting in the Middle East

The stories that the Middle East has contributed to the development of humanity find a unique way of being told through art. In a region of the world where traditions are deeply rooted and war tensions dominate the headlines, pictorial art is a form of expression that defies all boundaries. By uniting the past and the present, it explores attractive ways of expressing feelings and sensations. The Green Zone Foundation invites you on a journey through some of the region’s most notable contemporary painters, whose work narrates the complexities and exposes the beauty of their peoples.

Shirin Neshat and the female body as expression

Iranian artist Shirin Neshat has ventured into painting, photography, and video. Born in Iran in 1957, her work is a permanent tribute to female identity, expressing women’s resistance in a complex society such as Iran’s. The image of the female body is used as a liberating metaphor, fighting against oppression. To this end, her work is characterized by tracing lines of Persian calligraphy on the bodies of her models, creating intense visual poetry, as in the creation “Women of Allah.” Feminism is expressed with greater emphasis in her black-and-white photography, which integrates elements of Sufi poetry and feminist texts capable of dialoguing with each other and proposing a pictorial work that transcends the visual.

Khaled Hafez and satire as denunciation

The political life of Middle Eastern countries finds in the work of Egyptian artist Khaled Hafez (1963) a space to denounce its main evils: war and corruption. Using traditional Islamic art techniques fused with digital art, Hafez creates satirical images that invite reflection on current events in the region and on how globalization and contemporary Western culture have influenced Middle Eastern societies. Hafez’s technique is characterized by the use of bright colors, graffiti as a form of spontaneous expression, and collage. The pictorial language of this creator is understandable to the less experienced viewer and expresses the need to find a balance between nostalgia for the past and the social urgency of present-day problems. His most paradigmatic work is the series “Pharaonic Pop Culture,” in which he plays with the iconography of ancient Egypt to debate the country’s contemporary identity. In this way, Hafez reveals the living nature of the historical process.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian and ancestral spirituality

The use of fragmented mirrors in the revival of traditional Islamic mosaics is the cornerstone of Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s work. Through her artistic approach, this sculptor and painter creates an attractive play of light in her works that explores the concept of spirituality and projects it towards infinity. Her work “Mirror Work” draws attention to the decomposition of the facets of reality that invite human self-perception. Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s style uses geometric patterns to propose a contemporary view that does not reject the influences of the past.

Emily Jacir and the suffering of the Palestinian people

The rescue of memory, the suffering of the Palestinian people due to the diaspora, political silencing, and the longing to recover their land are explicit messages conveyed by Palestinian artist Emily Jacir from an intimate and poetic perspective. Jacir, born in 1970, has a style based on abstraction and figuration, always appealing to emotion and sensitivity. Jacir uses watercolor as her technique and paper as her medium to convey the fragility and strength of the Palestinian people’s identity, which persists despite forced displacement and the suffering of war.

Ahmed Morsi and Arab surrealism

Arab surrealism finds in the work of Egyptian artist Ahmed Morsi (1930) a reflective form on identity, time, and the position of human beings in the universe. Through human figures and shapes that evoke all kinds of living beings, his work dissolves into compositions that allude to spirituality. His pictorial creations refer to Arab culture through the intense use of color, symbolism, and lyricism, as each stroke alludes to poetry and the expression of feelings and ways of thinking.

Like many other artists from the Middle East, these creators demonstrate that contemporary pictorial art is not only an aesthetic composition but also a manifestation that narrates historical, political, and spiritual elements. The diversity of styles reflects the complexity of societies in the region. Contemporary art from the Middle East not only raises awareness, but also tells stories, denounces attitudes contrary to well-being and happiness, and heals feelings, in constant dialogue with the search for peace and plurality.