Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine

About

The eastern Mediterranean coast and its hinterland hold layers of ancient art: the carved rock facades of Nabataean Petra, the Roman temples of Baalbek and the funerary portraits of Palmyra. In the early 8th century, the Umayyad Great Mosque of Damascus was decorated with gold mosaics of trees and buildings, and Ottoman-era Damascus houses were panelled in painted wood.

Modern artists worked across the region and its diaspora. Gibran Kahlil Gibran illustrated his own writings in New York, Saloua Raouda Choucair built interlocking abstract sculptures in Beirut, Etel Adnan painted small blocks of luminous colour, and Fateh Moudarres fused Syrian folk imagery with modernism. Palestinian painters such as Nabil Anani, Sliman Mansour and Kamal Boullata explored land, identity and geometric script. Since the Lebanese civil war, Walid Raad and the duo Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige have made works that question how photographs, archives and documents record violence.