Part of Alserkal Art Week: A Wild Stitch
An exhibition by Bashir Makhoul, featuring his works in painting, sculpture, printmaking, and tapestries. His art explores identity, fragmentation, dispossession, and longing. Through layered symbols such as home, petals, and patterns, he examines the fragile balance between loss and hope, chaos and order, destruction and rebirth.
In The Promise, artist Bashir Makhoul reflects on home as both a sanctuary and a site of loss. Born in Galilee and now based in Canada, Makhoul explores his relationship with his homeland in this exhibition, examining its emotional and psychological complexities. His work captures the tension between nostalgia and rupture, presence and displacement, permanence, and impermanence. While Makhoul excels in oil on canvas, this exhibition presents various mediums, including handwoven wool and silk tapestries, electroplating sculptures, and mixed media works.
His diverse techniques enrich his exploration of exile and identity, imbuing his art with layered meanings. He allows the materiality of each medium to shape the conceptual foundation of his work: the intricate nature of weaving, for example, mirrors the act of reconstructing fragmented memories, adding warmth to his subject, while the industrial feel of electroplated sculptures suggests a disrupted sense of permanence. Home is traditionally seen as a place of refuge, a sanctuary that nurtures the soul and fosters deep connections with oneself and loved ones. It is meant to be a space of tranquility, privacy, and aesthetic harmony, a retreat from the outside world. In Makhoul’s work, home is more than just a physical structure; it is a site of dispossession, shaped by the burden of exile and the psychological weight of longing.
For him, as a Palestinian who has spent most of his life in exile, the notion of home is full of contradictions. The Palestinian experience of home under occupation is marked by deep belonging yet also with a persistent sense of uncertainty. In this context, home does not offer security but rather instability and at times loss, especially if it is in a refugee camp. As time passes, places change, as do memories. His work revolves around the moment home slips between presence and absence.