The Murex shell was discovered by the dog of Melqart, as he walked on the beach in Tyre, Lebanon. He bit on the shell, and as a result looked like he was bleeding from his mouth. Upon looking more carefully, Melqart discovered that it was not blood, but the snail inside the Murex shell made it look so. According to the myth, a nymph asked Melqart to make her a dress with that color.

The dye was greatly prized in antiquity because the color did not easily fade, but instead became brighter with weathering and sunlight. The Phoenicians created outside of their cities sites where they would capture and process the shell to colour fabrics with it. Thousands of shells were needed to color dye just a few centimeters of that highly prized Tyrian red. It is said that it smelled like garlic, even after washing it. Al Solh’s textile shows a hand-embroidered Murex shell that morphs into an abstract shape, mixed with found threads and organic fibers.

From his home in Ramallah, Palestine, Khalil Rabah found a means of confronting daily life through the repeated act of drawing olive tree trunks. Symbolic of Palestine, these trees are regularly cut down and uprooted. In Rabah’s work the fragments, painted on paper with bright colors, almost become severed body parts.