Hani Zurob

Artist's Exile

In 1994 Zurob moved from Rafah to Nablus and enrolled in the An-Najah National University where he received B.A. of Fine Arts in 1999. Due to Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement he studied there as an “illegal sojourner” and lived under constant threat of deportation. He moved to Ramallah in pursuit of a more active art and cultural scene and lived there from 1999 to 2006.

In 2002 Zurob was selected as one of ten finalists in the A. M. Qattan Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year Award. During Operation Defensive Shield Zurob was arrested by Israeli forces from his home while preparing for the exhibition. During the arrest the soldiers damaged the paintings he was working on. He was detained for 52 days in Ofer Prison west of Ramallah due to "confidential information." He was forced to sleep outside on asphalt with no bedding. As Amira Hass wrote, "But Zu'rob's talent has not always saved him. Tears flow from his eyes as he recalls the last minutes of the "interrogation" he underwent in May, 2002... Every so often he was taken for "interrogation." Tell me the names of your brothers and sisters, ordered the interrogator. He listed them. The interrogator said to him: You've forgotten someone. Zu'rob was confused. Whom had he forgotten? You forgot Rawan, said the interrogator, your sister's new daughter. Celebrations of births and weddings and sad occasions such as illness and death - participating in these family events is regularly denied to the Gazan "illegal sojourners" in the West Bank. So is it any wonder that Zu'rob forgot to mention his newborn niece to the interrogator, who had access to all the details concerning his subject on his computer screen?” Eventually, after the prosecution failed to put together an indictment against him, he was released. He informed the A. M. Qattan Foundation that he would no longer be able to participate because he would not be able to finish new work on time. They responded by giving him a two-month extension, and he created A Song: If I Say No, I Mean No in response to his experience in jail.

In 2006 he received a grant from the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris to take part in a 6-month artist residency there. His return home to Ramallah was barred by an Israeli order, and he was subsequently informed that he would be arrested and imprisoned upon returning because he had previously lived illegally in the West Bank. Through the support of friends, colleagues and the Cité Internationale des Arts, Zurob was able to stay in Paris and eventually bring his wife there as well. In 2009 Zurob was awarded the Renoir Grant which included an eight-month residency in Essoyes, France. Zurob cannot return to his homeland and remains in exile. He is currently based in Paris, France.

Awards

Artist residency, Le Cube – Independent Art Room, Rabat, Morocco, 2013

Artist residency, Municipality of la ville de Bobigny, France, 2011

Artist residency, Municipality of Paris, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France, 2010

La bourse Renoir, Essoyes, France, 2009

Artist residency, Maison de la Vigne, Salle Renoir, Essoyes, France, 2009

Artist residency, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France, 2009

Grand Prize of the International Salon of Contemporary Art, Bourges, France, 2008

Artist residency, Welfare Association, Atelier Palestine à la Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France, 2006

Grant supporting exhibition, Khalil Sakakini Centre, Ramallah, Palestine, 2006

Young Artist of the Year Award, one of ten selected artists, A.M. Qattan Foundation, Ramallah, Palestine, 2002

Monograph - Between Exits: Paintings by Hani Zurob

Between Exits: Paintings by Hani Zurob is the first monograph on the work of Hani Zurob from 2002 - 2012. It was published in 2012 by Black Dog Publishing. Author Kamal Boullata presents the chronological development of Zurob's work alongside the personal and political histories that influenced it, and Jean Fischer provided the introduction. “Hani's practice provides an important voice in contemporary Palestinian Culture, as well as a significant contribution to the creation of an Arab Aesthetic. Ultimately though, while Zurob's Art gives powerful expression to the Palestinian collective experience, it can also be seen in the context of more universal themes of personal identity and embraces humanity beyond the Palestinian context,” wrote Black Dog Publishing.

Flying Lessons & Waiting Series (2009-2014)

In reference to the work, Zurob stated, "Through the use of oil and acrylic paint and other mediums, I try to create a world which is composed of three worlds: exile where the artist lives (the father), and who appears in the paintings as the sole living human being by the depiction of the son who is portrayed in a relatively small scale in contrast to his surroundings. The second world concerns Qoudsi himself, as he visually appears and in his manner of showing his feelings through the use of his toys and his interactions with them. The third world is one of space, where we come from, which is depicted through walls, and multilayered backgrounds, as symbolic traces of the complex life that does not enable Qoudsi and me to meet. Yet, it is in my construction of a virtual world where a space for such a meeting occurs."

Qoudsi is the prominent figure in both of the series Flying Lessons and Waiting. As Annie-Rose Harrison-Dunn wrote in her review, "...He paints a space where the two can talk about these problems and try to find a solution. In this walled, liminal space Qoudsi sits with his toys- notably all forms of transport- waiting for his dad just as he waits in Jerusalem. At first glance these paintings appear sort of sad- a lost boy alone with his toys in no mans land- but Zurob prefers instead for them to be seen in terms of a sense of working through wrongs and gathering strength of conviction by generation. Hani Zurob tells his story through his paintings; Qoudsi now begins to develop his own form of articulation, who knows what he will eventually say and how loudly he will say it. “It’s like a kind of heritage,” says Zurob."

Heritage (2009)

This piece is a collision of the positive memories Zurob has of days during childhood spent on the beach with his family, layered with a photograph of his son’s first time seeing the sea and fear of it.

Standby Series (2007 - 2008)

Zurob's statement about this series reads, "'Standby' is a term that may cross the minds of a few people quickly, or if worse comes to the worst, for the unluckiest, 'Standby' may represent just a few hours of 'transit' or 'an outstanding situation' in some airport or another; actually, in my personal situation, 'Standby' goes beyond the simple geographical or linguistic criteria to refer explicitly to the whole Palestinian people who have been placed under such a situation for nearly sixty years now, i.e. since 1948!" These ideas were expanded upon in a monograph review in Harper's Bazaar Art Arabia, "In his mixed media ‘Standby’ series, marking the 60th year of Israeli occupation, Zurob’s disjointed bodies represent time far beyond just several hours in an airport – this is a temporary situation that has become permanent."

Projections Series (2008)

As Jean Fischer states, " And yet, it is also 'sensation' that accounts for Hani's occasional turn to painterly abstraction: the more abstract Barrage and Projection series, coincide with periods of deepening violence against the Gazan population, as if any form of naturalistic depiction would be inadequate to convey the artist's feelings. Altogether despite their cultural and temporal distance, there is much in the author's [Boullata's] analysis of Hani's work that recalls Bacon's preference for poetry as a primary source of inspiration as well as his own artistic responses to an earlier violent (European) reality. For both artists the photograph is a central tool towards restaging a disassembled human form, reassembled in delineated frames or in the minimal outline of rooms, which function as fragile, often restrictive armatures for the body in space, but always, as Bacon said, as a "recording of being in the world.""

Marbles' War Series (2007)

"His 2007 ‘Marbles' War’ series (mixed media, acrylic, pigment and tar on canvas) is an exercise in self-criticism. The marbles refer to the game he played with friends during his childhood at the time of the first Intifada, but also to the various war games these same children are now playing as adults – now, marbles are no longer an innocent game, " wrote Harper's Bazaar Art Arabia.

Barrage Series (2006)

Barrage is a body of work made immediately after Zurob discovered that he would not be allowed to return home and would need to live in exile in Paris. As Boullata explained, "While he had been intermittently feeling torn between figurative and abstract modes of expression, this time, he was absolutely certain that no painting language could express the intensity and immediacy of his anguish more forcefully than a painterly mode of abstraction for which free-flowing gestural brushstrokes might organically embody the emotional torrents of the day."

Exit Series (2006)

Exit is one of the first bodies of work Zurob made in Paris during his residency at Cité Internationale des Arts. These paintings incorporate collage, featuring traces of life in his new city - telephone calling cards, receipts and gauze. As Zurob commented, "In Ramallah, the fish thinks it swims in an ocean, just to discover later that the ocean was only a barrel. You know what a real ocean is when you live in one. In Paris, I was shocked and liberated at the same time." Steve Sabella writes, "Hani Zurob, one of the most significant painters of the new generation of Palestinian artists to emerge in the last decade, expresses, ‘the best thing that happened to my art was the moment when I arrived in Paris because what I learnt in the last four years might have taken me a lifetime back in Palestine.’"

Siege Series (2004-2006)

As Mahmoud Hashhash wrote in the Le Monde Diplomatique, "The reds, yellows and blues are pure and vibrant and the lines are strong, so that the painting appears imbued with a dramatic energy. The presence of the contorted figure in the painting points to a psychological echo of the physical representations of the siege. The figure has clearly been permanently transformed, because of the severe and inhumane conditions it has had to endure.

Public Collections

Yvette & Mazen Qupty Collections of the Palestinian Art Court - Al Hoash, Jerusalem, Palestine

Association Renoir, Essoyes, France

The Arab American National Museum (AANM) Permanent Collection, Dearborn, Michigan, USA

Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

Bank of Palestine Museum, Bethlehem, Palestine

Selected reviews