EXHIBITIONS
Saleh Barakat Gallery presents False Witnesses, a solo show by the influential Iraqi artist Dia al-Azzawi (b. 1939), whose iconic work is inspired by the long and shared history of the Arab world, from ancient Mesopotamia to the present day. Originally scheduled for October 2023, then rescheduled for September 2024, this exhibition is a biting critique of the corruption endemic to all political systems, seen through the prism of recent events in Iraq. Although the main body of works directly reference the October Revolution (2019–20), the destruction of Mosul (2014–17) and Aleppo (2012–16), and the sectarian divisions in Baghdad (2003 onwards), they are part of Azzawi's ongoing endeavour to highlight injustice in general and champion the voices of all victims of oppression through his work. The artist has also added a display of charcoal drawings from the celebrated series Night of Extermination (2023), which were made at the start of the genocide in Gaza, and his new daftar (artist’s book) called Gaza: The Pain that Opened My Daughter’s Eyes (2025), to emphasise the fact that the violent oppression of Palestinians is tantamount to injustice against us all.
In October 2023, during the first weeks of the genocide in Gaza, Dia al-Azzawi made a series of twelve charcoal drawings called Nights of Extermination. In these works, centred on the eyes of the victims, aerial aggressions take the form of vicious birds of prey, billowing smoke and unknown objects raining from the skies, while scattered body parts are heaped in the confusion of widespread casualty and death. The innocent victims stare directly out of Azzawi’s drawings in obvious distress, entreating the viewer’s sympathy at the unfairness and hopelessness of their desperate fate.
In a 2025 daftar (or artist’s book) called Gaza: the Pain that Opened My Daughter’s Eyes, Azzawi overlays faces of innocent victims in black and white with red paint to represent both their suffering and the secondary agony of witnessing atrocities through journalism and social media, an experience of painful awakening that he observed in his own daughter, which is further signified by artist’s own handprint of testimony (also in red paint).
These recent works about Gaza can be viewed as a continuation of Azzawi’s ongoing series Land of Darkness (1991–present), which began with a set of charcoal drawings about Iraqi civilians and a diarised daftar called Book of Darkness, during the 1991 Gulf War. At the same time, they are also part of Azzawi’s continued efforts to highlight injustice against Palestinians, which can be seen in his work from the early 1970s onwards, as a symbol for the unfairness of global inequality and all corrupt political systems: this criticism is at the heart of the works displayed in the solo exhibition ‘False Witnesses’.
An American who has lived outside of America for more than fifteen years, Everitte Barbee takes seriously the implicit and explicit ideals of his home country. In fact, the rules of American, and indeed western, society at large, seem to fascinate him; the rules, and how they are broken. While the form of his work rests comfortably within an established tradition of Arabic calligraphy, it is clear that the subject rests far outside of the Arab world, that American culture is Barbee’s central theme. Barbee’s evident fascination with the hypocrisy that he sees at the root of Western culture tracks through his art works - Arabic calligraphy satirizing American values. Yet, despite an evident ambivalence towards his home country, the work of Barbee is not cynical, rather is rooted in disappointment, a disappointment in that insincerity that he sees at the heart of a culture that he was born into, is somehow still a part of. And indeed, while Arabic calligraphy is perhaps his most sustained practice to date, his studies in technique are not limited to this genre, rather he is interested in the broader source of culture, the roots of the world. Why do we love art, he asks – a lack of comprehension, the sacred. Barbee longs for the sacred, a return to Eden, roots, something to hold on to.
Through his artworks themselves, as well as his identity as an American artist living in Lebanon, Barbee seeks to challenge what he sees as the misleading narratives of the region that are often told to Americans. By living in the middle east, and in making the work that he does, he seeks to show America that they do not understand this world as well as they might think, to complicate narratives, open minds. His message to America, the western world at large - Arab culture is deep, ancient and kind.
There is a clarity in Barbee’s vision for a world without hypocrisy, seeking this through a return to art as sacred lack of comprehension. Until then, he will present his truth.