It’s your last chance to see the ethereal works of Kamal Boullata in Abu Dhabi this weekend. The show ends on May 13. The Palestinian artist has a beautiful show up at Warehoue421 in as part of a year-round programme of featuring participating galleries of Abu Dhabi Art. This past month, they invited Meem Gallery from Dubai.
Over the course of almost five decades, Boullata has created his own abstract language that addresses formal questions of space, colour and transparency, as well as questions around Palestinian identity and exile, referencing. He is an art historian as well as an artist and his references show the range of his erudition: from traditional Palestinian embroidery and the geometry of the Dome of the Rock to French realism and the encounter between King Solomon and Bilqis.
The latter episode is explored in one of his latest series of work that is on show at Warehouse421, alongside, he says, “the discovery of reflection and transparency”, a subject he has just guest-lectured on at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
Kamal Boullata: A Survey of Recent Paintings brings together work for the first time from Boullata's last three series: Bilqis (2013), Addolcendo (2015–16), and Angelus (2016–17).
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Read more:
Boullata's art finds beauty in life
Warehouse421: art addressing the problems faced by Arab youth
Spotlight on Arab print pioneers at Meem Gallery’s affordable-art show
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For Angelus, for example, he looked at a subject that was frequently represented in Renaissance work, but has recently dropped away: the angelus, or Catholic prayer that is said at dawn, noon, and evening. For Boullata, this prayer is significant in that it crosses religious traditions. It comes from the Annunciation, when the Virgin Mary is told she is bearing Jesus – an "event that is both in the Qu'ran as well as in the synoptic gospels," he notes. The prayer times of the Angelus also correspond to the three of the prayer times in Islam.
Noting that there is only one ("to my knowledge") recent painting of the Angelus, by the French realist painter Jean-Francois Millet in the 1850s, Boullata created a few more: images of the light of the prayers that move through the day.
Kamal Boullata: A Survey of Recent Paintings is at Warehouse421 until May 13. For more info, go to www.warehouse421.ae
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In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
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TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
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The biog
Favourite film: The Notebook
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
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Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
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For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
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Oman, UAE, Namibia
Al Amerat, Muscat
Results
Oman beat UAE by five wickets
UAE beat Namibia by eight runs
Fixtures
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