Karim Gallery’s printmaking exhibition weaves history into art

AMMAN — On Saturday, contemporary arts gallery Karim Gallery launched “The Printmaking Exhibition,” which is expected to run until August 10, 2021. اضافة اعلان

The exhibition features artworks by Arab artists Dia Azzawi, Bashar Alhroub, Mahmoud Obaidi, Amar Dawod, Halim Karabibene, Himat Ali, Yasir Safi, Khaled Takreti, and Nazar Yahya, the exhibition’s curator.



Inside Karim Gallery’s printmaking exhibition. (Photo: Handout from Karim Gallery)

“We asked our artists whether they had any prints they would like to display, and they all said they did, despite the fact that they usually use different techniques to produce their art,” Karim Gallery’s manager, Majd Ismail, told Jordan News. 

And while the artworks share the same medium, they convey various themes.

Basher Alhroub’s “Fallen Angel” collection — an interpretation of the “Fall of Icarus” set against a backdrop of Jerusalem — deals with themes of belonging and identity.

According to Alhroub, “Fallen Angel” is imbued with “existential anxieties... manifested in the symbolism of the body, the distress, emotional anxiety, and threat of identity erasure.” Having grown up in Ramallah, Alhroub feels that the collection is an expression of his own Palestinian identity.

As for Halim Karabibene’s etching prints, they mimic a surrealist “world of dreams” and are “products of the subconscious.” His work draws from Roman mosaics in Tunisia.

Likewise, Himat Ali’s collection “Letter to Ishtar” invokes an ancient past. It depicts the works of seven Arab poets addressing the Babylonian goddess of love and war, Ishtar.

According to the gallery’s pamphlet, Ali addresses “contemporary concerns through ancient Mesopotamian” symbolism.

Evidently, the exhibition is as much a celebration of printmaking as it is of history and contemporary Arab culture. Each work tells its own story while constituting part of a larger narrative.

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