Fahed Halabi’s solo exhibition at the Umm el Fahem Gallery is a milestone for the artist and presents the current developments in his work. Halabi was born in 1970 and grew up in Majdal Shams. He immigrated to Europe around a decade ago and settled in Hamburg, Germany. He has worked in various forms of media over the years, primarily painting and video, and some of his works are considered iconic in the local art scene. 

Like Halabi's other exhibitions, the starting point of this one is related to the artist's identity – the identity he was born with and the identity with which he lives and travels through the world. Halabi's insistence on returning to the topic of identity is stubborn and ironic in that it demonstrates both its own lack of origin and the idea of identity as a complex and paradoxical experience. The exhibition is full of portraits, both paintings and photographs, including a portrait of the artist with his family. Like the construction site and restaurant kitchen – sites Halabi depicted in his works for years – the portrait, too is an arena of political absurdities depicted by observing reality simultaneously from an external and internal perspective. 

In his current exhibition, Halabi positions himself in relation to the theme of race – a topic that is almost taboo in Israeli society but serves as a prominent identity marker in German society where he now lives. He says: 

“I have lived in several countries around the world over the last ten years and met people from all cultures, races and nationalities. This gave me a broad perspective on human nature and on what all people have in common. When I started teaching art in Hamburg, the children in my class hailed from various cultural and ethnic backgrounds. I noticed that from ages four through six, children with dark skin have already adopted the Western concept of light beige as the ultimate marker for skin color. This set off a red flag for me, and I started thinking about the depth of racism in our culture and everyday life.” 

In skin color, Halabi sees an element that he can import to the sphere of art but which can never be purely artistic, disconnected from its social and political connotations. Just like the construction workers, kitchen workers, immigrants and refugees that appear in his previous works, skin color is a "transparent" template that we must practice seeing, a social blind spot that is ignored and denied, which art can not only show, but also demonstrate how to see.

Grand opening: 12:00, 20 May 2023
The exhibition is open Sunday-Thursday and Saturdays between 09:00-15:00

Curator: Leah Abir