In the purportedly liberal realm of the art world, an artist like Samia Halaby is certainly deserving of closer attention.
Samia Halaby is an important and celebrated leader of abstract painting, and a scholar of Palestinian art. Born in Jaffa in 1936, in what was then Mandatory Palestine, Halaby was forced to flee after the Arab/Israeli war in 1948, eventually settling in the United States in 1951. Though her works are not overtly or avowedly political, she says that they portray the materiality of her experiences, feelings, and personal narrative, which in turn become central to understanding her work. In this way, her abstractions become concrete, material references to wider social issues and causes.
Yet the canon of abstract art is and remains mostly associated with white men. The Wikipedia entry for abstract art contains only a handful of female names — like Georgia O’Keeffe and Hilma af Klint — who basically serve as footnotes to giants like Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, and others. A 2014 article published by Anna Seaman in The National praised Halaby’s work on the occasion of a major retrospective at Ayyam Gallery, yet the artist’s inclusion into the often cited canon of abstract art remains a footnote.
