we refuse_d

Exhibition

Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art

Part of Mathaf’s 15-year anniversary celebration, we refuse_d invites artists to explore the tensions between resilience and action, probing responses to contemporary political and social challenges.

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we refuse_d brings together fifteen artists whose practices explore refusal, endurance, and action—asking what it means to persist, resist, and create under conditions of silencing, censorship, and displacement.

Developed through ongoing dialogue between artists and curators, we refuse_d is both a collective statement and a space for solidarity. It resonates with the spirit of the nineteenth-century Parisian Salon des Refusés, drawing attention to the fragile optimism and resilience that emerge in times of crisis.

Most of the works are new commissions, presented by artists who affirm the necessity of art as presence. Through the lens of refusal, their works trace paths of persistence, resistance, heritage, community, collective care, and repair.

Above all, we refuse_d is an exhibition about life, persistence, and the necessity of making art.

Artists: Taysir Batniji, DAAR (Sandi Hilal & Alessandro Petti), Barış Doğrusöz, Samia Halaby, Majd Abdel Hamid, Emily Jacir, Jumana Manna, Walid Raad, Khalil Rabah, Yasmine Eid Sabbagh, Nour Shantout, Suha Shoman, Dima Srouji, Oraib Toukan, Abdul Hay Mosallam Zarara.

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About the curators

Nadia Radwan is an art historian and curator specialising in Middle Eastern modernism, currently serving as the head of Visual Arts at HEAD – Geneva and founder of the Manazir platform for visual arts in the MENA region. Vasıf Kortun is a Turkish curator and writer, best known as the founding director of SALT and Platform Garanti in Istanbul, and for curating the 3rd and 9th Istanbul Biennials as well as the 2008 Taipei Biennial.