Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation, Alia Farid’s recent work explores the material impact of oil extraction in the Arab Gulf through two predominant materials; blue faience, an aqua glaze that dates back 6000 years, and polyester resin, a byproduct of petroleum production that originated in the 20th century. This work, from a series of six plates commissioned for Sharjah Biennial 16, builds on research conducted in Stanford University into thousands of Iraqi objects and records withheld in the US. The work encompasses the artist’s ongoing experiments with a type of resin manufactured by United Oil Projects called Kupol LR 3303 which she layers with images tracing her matriarchal lineage as well as Iraqi spiritual traditions that assume the form of charts and cosmological maps.

In 2022, Zaatari used a photograph of a nude woman—likely a sex worker—who had posed for her physician Farid Haddad in the 1920s or 1930s. Originally printed on a transparency to be projected onto canvas and turned into a painting, the image had served only as an intermediary tool. Zaatari reworked it into a new artwork: an iconic bas-relief that narrates the photograph’s story while distancing it from its photographic form. The intention was to conceal the woman’s identity while honoring her presence, naming her the Venus of Beirut and granting permanence to what was meant to remain unseen.

Around 1970, a farmer brought an unusually large watermelon to Studio Shehrazade in Saida, asking that it be photographed as a record of his production before it got sold. While the photo initially served a simple documentary purpose—perhaps also fulfilling a self-congratulatory impulse—it takes on broader significance nearly fifty years later, namely for something it did not intend. The watermelon has, since, become an unofficial symbol of Palestine; its colors echoing those of the Palestinian flag, often banned or censored. In this context, the photograph’s muted colors come to evoke the broader suppression of Palestine’s emergence and national expression.