Q0DE at Art Cairo 2023

This year, our exhibition brings together the experiences of three Arab artists at Art Cairo 2023.

Sliman Mansour (Palestine) and Ismail Al Rifai (Syria) present artworks that discuss a wide range of subjects, focusing on their backgrounds. They discuss landscape, human emotions, and womanhood in this context and how these subjects shaped their physical and social settings.

Sliman Mansour

Born in 1947, Mansour spent his childhood around the verdant hills and fields of Birzeit — where he was born — and later his adolescence in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. These experiences left a significant mark on his work.

By using symbols derived from Palestinian life, culture, history, and tradition, Mansour uniquely illustrates Palestinians’ resolve and connection with their land. His pieces epitomize art as a form of resistance.

Sliman Mansour’s art deftly reflects the hopes and realities of a people living under occupation for the better part of a century. Since the early 1970s, he has translated his experiences of isolation, displacement, community, and rootedness using imagery and symbols that have contributed to developing an iconography of the Palestinian struggle.

Sliman Mansour is one of the most distinguished and renowned artists in Palestine. His style embodies steadfastness in the face of a relentless military occupation. His work has come to symbolize the Palestinian national identity and inspired generations of Palestinian and international artists and activists.

Ismail Al Rifai

Al Rifai is a visual artist, poet, and novelist, born in Syria in 1967; He currently holds the position of editorial and Arabic content consultant at Sharjah Art Foundation and has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Damascus University.

The large monochromatic faces of Ismail Al Rifai remain at the center of his artistic journey. The weeping mother, the sad sibling, the lover, the friend, all his faces reflect our collective consciousness and the turmoil of our times.

The blue greys of his palette dominate the surface of his work and capture the smoke of conflict. Al Rifai uses layers and time to form immortal icons, observers of all that is happening in the region.

Faces emerge and meet in expressive forms filled with sadness, defiance, scorn, questions, and cries. Faces and figures search the surreal sky stormy with gunpowder for a sense of freedom.

Ismail Al Rifai is biased toward the inner human world as the primordial space that precedes creation and the initial place for the emergence of renewed forms. It is the new place where the image of spirits rather than forms manifested, and individual struggles overlap with their cosmic root.