Ayyam Gallery Dubai (12, Alserkal Avenue) is pleased to present For My Father, the solo show of leading Palestinian artist Rula Halawani. Featuring a recent series of photographs, For My Father serves as Halawani’s debut exhibition with the gallery since joining its roster of artists earlier this year.
Widely respected for her experimental approach to documentary photography, Halawani’s latest body of work details the Israeli occupation of Palestine from the vantage point of fading recollection. Creating a photographic record in remembrance of her late father, Halawani revisits several sites throughout historic Palestine, specifically the scenery that shaped her childhood memories. In the ghostly images of the series, the rolling hills, seashore, and traditional neighbourhoods of the artist’s youth are distorted through the lens of her camera as she struggles to identify what was once familiar. Invading industry now defines the horizon. Abandoned homes are shown in a gradual process of deterioration, overgrown with weeds that sprout from crumbling facades. Once popular beaches now host solitary figures whose silhouettes are fogged at the edges as though slowly disappearing with the diminishing sand and sea.
