The exhibition, which will remain at the Casa Árabe headquarters in Madrid until the month of May, includes three of Rabah’s best-known projects: the Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind, United States of Palestine Airlines and Art Exhibition: Ready Made Representation. The exhibit will be curated by Javier Hontoria within the framework of Year 35: Madrid, a series of artistic visits and events that will be put on jointly by several institutions in the city to celebrate ARCO’s anniversary.

Khalil Rabah is one of the most important artists on the international scene. Born in Jerusalem in 1961 and residing between New York, Beirut and Ramallah, he has instilled his work with this highly nomadic spirit, especially one of the series that has been included in the exhibition, the Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind, an “institution” linked to studying, disseminating and producing Palestinian art and culture, but at the same time a wandering institution which only becomes visible at the different exhibitions where it is presented, like the one being hosted by Casa Árabe on this occasion. The museum is made up of various branches or departments, including those devoted to botany, geology, paleontology and anthropology. In these fields, most of which are related with studies in the natural sciences, one can hear the echo of the very history of Palestine through subjects such as displacement, identity, absence and memory.

Joining the museum in this Madrid exhibition are another two of the artist’s most famous ensembles of work: the reconstruction of a United States of Palestine Airlines office and the paintings in the Art Exhibition series. The airlines office, with its models, clocks and logos, is a work in which the Palestinian people’s longings are perpetuated in an everlasting present moment. As for the hyper-realistic paintings from Art Exhibition, their subject matter includes photographs from Palestinian art displays held in different places for over 60 years, making reference to the idea of all paintings as documents or archives, and their inherent subjectivity.

Exhibition brochure (PDF)