Third Text

27 January 2026

Nadine Atallah

‘we refuse_d’, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar, 31 October 2025 – 9 February 2026, curated by Vasif Kortun and Nadia Radwan

The Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar, recently organised a significant exhibition poised to make history. ‘we refuse_d’ serves as an artistic, intellectual and political response to acts of censorship directed at Palestinian cultural producers, artists and intellectuals from the Arab world and beyond, as well as those who have publicly supported Palestine since 7 October 2023. A notable accomplishment of the exhibition is its presentation of works that might otherwise have remained obscure due to their removal from institutional programmes. The exhibition also brings to fruition projects interrupted by censorship and introduces new works that critically examine these mechanisms, highlighting the essential role of artistic creation, particularly within communities that have endured profound trauma and existential threats. Conceived as an act of resistance to colonial efforts to silence Palestinians and their supporters and to erase a nation by eliminating its millennia-old history and that of its people, the exhibition fosters a network of solidarity: ‘we refuse to stop making art, to stop caring, to stop thinking, to give up, to disappear, to be refused…’ declare the curators and artists, representing all those who, beyond the exhibition, resist the violence of enforced silence. ‘we refuse_d’ was conceived by art historian Nadia Radwan, Head of the Visual Arts Department at the Geneva University of Art and Design and a specialist in modernism in Egypt and abstraction in the Arab world, together with Vasif Kortun, Research and Curatorial Adviser at Mathaf.

These two intellectual minds ensure that the exhibition maintains theoretical rigour and is firmly anchored in historical context. By referencing the Salon des Refusés, which in nineteenth-century Paris united artists rejected by the official Salon in protest against an authoritarian and conservative academic system, the exhibition aligns itself with a tradition of dissent. It also critiques the cancel culture that has permeated global artworlds over the past decade, identifying its anti-Palestinian manifestations as symptomatic of broader issues. Although ‘we refuse_d’ does not explicitly reference it, the controversy surrounding the withdrawal of the Indonesian collective Taring Padi’s work from documenta fifteen in Kassel in 2022 exemplified tensions that have intensified in subsequent years. Within the context of Germany’s complex relationship with its Nazi past, the accusation of anti-Semitism directed at Taring Padi’s monumental banner People’s Justice (2002), which depicted the violence of Suharto’s dictatorship, signalled the failure to achieve a substantive shift in artistic narratives, despite this being a stated objective of that edition of documenta. Taring Padi, lamenting the lack of complexity and contextualisation in the reception of their work, primarily identified a failure to foster dialogue with European audiences. As observed here, cancel culture not only rejects dialogue but also suppresses narratives that diverge from a dominant, purportedly universal moral vision. Since 7 October 2023, pro-Palestinian positions are frequently condemned as apologism for terrorism, with the intent of delegitimising dissenting voices. ‘we refuse_d’ demonstrates that alternative responses are possible. The exhibition’s conception within an Arab institution is particularly noteworthy. Although the official solidarity of Arab states with Gaza and Palestine has been subject to scrutiny in recent years, the commitment of the artworld to critique and support underscores the extent to which this conflict is also a cultural one.

Among the artists featured, the exhibition pays particular tribute to Samia Halaby (born 1936), widely recognised as one of the most significant abstract painters of the past fifty years and a pioneer in digital art. A dedicated room functions as a miniature retrospective, intended to protest the abrupt cancellation of what would have been her first major solo exhibition in the United States, where she has lived in exile since the 1970s. In 2024, Indiana University’s Eskenazi Museum of Art cancelled an exhibition Halaby had prepared for three years, citing alleged security concerns. At Mathaf, visitors encounter works originally intended for the US exhibition, alongside others rejected by that exhibition’s organisers as too political. Positioned at the entrance, Massacre of the Innocents, Gaza (2024), a large canvas animated by dynamic brushstrokes in white, black, pink and brown, confronts viewers. According to the artist, ‘It is about the children buried in the rubble of Gaza and about our optimism that we will rebuild and even bring the occupation to a close’. The biblical reference underscores the historical connection between ancient Judea and Palestinian history, while also invoking a theme prevalent in Renaissance painting, which Halaby frequently references, particularly in her critique of the dominance of perspective in visual representation. Additional works, ranging from small-format pieces on paper (the Occupied Jerusalem series, 1995) to monumental canvases nearly nine metres in length (Transitions, 1987), exemplify Halaby’s commitment to creating abstract painting in motion as an integral part of social and political engagement. Presented almost exclusively without frames and pinned directly to the wall, these works highlight both the challenges of their mobility and the imperative to liberate painting from the frame to engage with reality more effectively.

View of the room in ‘we refuse_d’ dedicated to Samia Halaby’s paintings; on the left: Massacre of the Innocents, Gaza, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 24.5 x 462 cm, courtesy of the artist, Sfeir-Semler Gallery and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar

Extending the vibrant palette of Halaby’s canvases, Walid Raad presents an abstract installation using colourful lines of tape, produced in collaboration with graphic designer Pierre Huyghebaert, to interrogate the concept of refusal. The artists collected statements from cultural institutions, published in the press and on social media, that announce or justify acts of censorship against Palestinian or pro-Palestinian artists, as well as responses from those affected. To evoke a sense of incompleteness, these texts are printed on paper and taped to the floor among rubbish bags and empty tape rolls. The wall markings allow viewers to imagine the spatial arrangement of these discourses, as the artists intentionally decline to impose a specific order or hierarchy, describing them as ‘phrases we wish were ours, and ones we would never claim’. Nearly illegible, the phrase ‘Leadership told him they wanted to avoid “picking a side”’ appears like a watermark on a white wall, dominating the other statements and generating unease: what appears at first glance to be ahistorical relativism in fact conceals a pro-Israel position contrary to the neutrality that is claimed. Among the selected excerpts, Raad and Huyghebaert also reference the cancellation of Halaby’s exhibition by Indiana University.

Walid Raad in collaboration with Pierre Huyghebaert, I thought I’d escape my fate (again), 2025, installation view, courtesy of the artists and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar

In addition to the issue of censorship and its rejection, a central theme in many of the exhibition’s artworks is the use of architecture to exert control over territories and populations. This focus places the construction, destruction and preservation of buildings at the forefront of the discourse. The installation by DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Research) exemplifies the collective’s initiative to have the Dheisheh refugee camp, established in 1949 south of Bethlehem, recognised as a World Heritage Site. Rather than seeking UNESCO’s formal approval, the artists, collaborating with camp residents and representatives, aim ‘to see refugee history being acknowledged and an attempt to bring the right of return back to the center of the political discussion’. Photographs of the camp's buildings are displayed on light boxes, highlighting both the fragility and resilience of structures originally intended as temporary. The arrangement of these boxes, interspersed with imitation concrete cubes that function as bases and supports for printed images, evokes a monument that is both lightweight and mobile. A similar tension is present in Interstices, a Dizzying Array of Combinations by Turkish artist Barış Doğrusöz, who is based in Lebanon. This work comprises a constellation of aerial sculptures suspended along the full height of a wall. Although constructed from lightweight wood, these minimalist forms resemble wrought iron and serve as a visual lexicon of wartime architecture. They represent models of pillboxes and small blockhouses camouflaged in conflict zones, each equipped with loopholes for defensive weaponry. Initiated in 2018, the series has been expanded with new works for ‘we refuse_d’. Palestinian artist Dima Srouji also foregrounds architecture as a tool of control in her practice. As both an architect and visual artist, Srouji has created an installation based on the unrealised master plan for the city of Jaffa, designed by the town’s mayor before the Nakba to prevent occupation. The plan, which purported to ‘modernise’ the city, adopted colonial terminology in pursuit of independence. Ultimately, the plan was never implemented, and Jaffa was evacuated. Srouji had urban planning archives engraved on black marble, resembling gravestones. The black-painted engravings render the lines nearly invisible, imparting a spectral quality to the documents and inviting viewers to contemplate a counterfactual history: if the master plan had been realised, would Jaffa have remained Palestinian?

DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Research), Refugee Heritage project, 2015, installation view, courtesy of the artists and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar

Barış Doğrusöz, Interstices (a Dizzying Array of Combinations), 2018–2025, installation view, courtesy of the artists and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar

The theme of landscape recurs throughout the works of several artists who engage with nature and its transformations. Suha Shoman, for example, uses family photographs and moving images to recount the story of her grandfather’s orchard in northern Gaza, where orange, clementine and lemon trees once flourished. These visual materials underpin a linear narrative that enumerates, with precise figures, the thousands of trees uprooted by Israeli forces over several decades, ultimately reducing the orchard to a barren desert. Presented as a factual account, the narrative exposes the escalation and culmination of colonial violence, tracing a trajectory from the initial planting of fruit trees in 1929 to their destruction in 2009. By employing a chronological structure, the work asserts that the history of Palestine predates the Nakba – the artist was born in 1944 – and emphasises that dispossession and violence are longstanding realities. In the same exhibition space, Khalil Rabah displays a series of pastels depicting sections of olive trees, produced in 2024 from wood collected in his Ramallah studio. The contorted forms of these sections evoke human anatomy, such as limbs or organs. The use of vivid, harmonious colours imbues these fragmented bodies with a sense of gentleness. The drawings are mirrored in a large, polished marble slab, upon which the branches – or possibly the roots – of an olive tree are visible, as the tree’s aboveground and underground parts are rendered symmetrically. By challenging the relativity of perception and being positioned on pallet trucks, the work appears to await relocation. For Majd Abdel Hamid, botanical imagery functions as a metaphor for resilience and adaptation to arid conditions. Over several months, the artist documented the growth of a succulent plant through a series of photographs and, notably, understated embroideries that reference the traditional tatreez technique. Finally, Oraib Toukan presents Things Bigger Than What Can Be Seen (2025), a publication produced for the exhibition and accompanied by photographs that, through depictions of the ground, interrogate the capacity of topography to render injustice visible.

Khalil Rabah, in the foreground: Evidence, 2025, carved marble, transpallets, wooden pallet, 140 x 280 cm; on the wall: Testimonies, 2024, 80 oil pastel on paper drawings, 50 x 70 cm each, courtesy of the artist, Sfeir-Semler Gallery and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar

The works on display engage with both built and natural landscapes to articulate a refusal to forget or erase the past, emphasising the necessity of narrative and documentation for the preservation of memory and the possibility of a future. Many participating artists ground their practice in historical archives. For example, yasmine eid sabbagh, who holds a PhD in art theory and cultural studies, presents the initial phase of a research project conducted with Tabara Korka Ndiaye and Ndeye Debo Seck that examines Senegalese solidarity with Palestine. Their documentary film utilises diplomatic archives and interviews to construct new mythologies and advocate for sustained solidarity between the two nations, a relationship that has been challenged during the current genocide. The authors’ appeal to ‘move towards a better world’ serves as a central argument for constructing a shared future. Emily Jacir, in her contribution, draws parallels between Ireland and Palestine by comparing the histories of British rule in both contexts. Renowned for her video and conceptual work, Jacir employs documents, photographs and sound performance protocols to investigate how the standardisation of time was implemented as a means of controlling colonised populations and suppressing indigenous temporalities. A nineteenth-century Irish church bell from Armagh is displayed in the gallery, stripped of its original function and thereby liberated from temporal constraints. In contrast, Taysir Batniji addresses the concept of time in his recent series Homeless Colors, initiated in 2022, which encapsulates the emotional tenor of the exhibition. Batniji uses pencils and pens found in the street to fill sheets of paper until the ink or lead is exhausted. This process can take several weeks, resulting in dense layers of colour, or sometimes only a few lines, highlighting the ephemeral nature of existence and the unpredictability of its end. For Batniji, a native of Gaza, this meditative practice became a means to sustain his artistic activity during the genocide and to resist the exhaustion associated with producing work amid overwhelming grief. Additionally, Batniji presents a series of photographs of keys, accompanied by the narratives of their owners – displaced Palestinians who are unable to return to their homes or whose homes have been destroyed. The artist connects these keys to his own, reproduced in glass, underscoring the increasing fragility of the prospect of return.

Taysir Batniji, Homeless Colors, 2024, drawings, coloured pencil and pen on paper, installation view in ‘we refuse_d’, courtesy of the artist, Sfeir-Semler Gallery and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar

The exhibition concludes with a call for resistance and joy, presenting large banners by Jumana Manna that evoke mawasim, traditional Arab celebrations. These handsewn and embroidered textiles interweave imagery of political demonstrations and popular festivities, overlaid with quotations from Palestinian political prisoners such as Walid Daqqa, who became a writer during his detention and died in 2024. Displayed on the ground and on structures reminiscent of balconies, the banners evoke a public square, underscoring the significance of community. Manna’s installation resonates with the work of Nour Shantout, who employs tatreez, traditional Palestinian embroidery, to transform cross-stitch into pixellated representations of social media posts on large textile pieces. Shantout was expelled from her doctoral programme in Vienna due to her social media posts supporting Palestine. ^[1]  The embroideries are accompanied by an audio piece in which the artist reads texts by authors, including the Lebanese Marxist philosopher Mahdi Amel (1936–1987). The work is distinguished by its handcrafted electronic circuit, which subtly alters the sound it emits. Hand-arranged copper wire forms patterns characteristic of Gaza dresses and reproduces a protest slogan. The artist explains, ‘I was thinking about sound as material and reflecting on a feeling I had when my social media was monitored last year; I felt that someone was listening to my phone calls, and I wanted to convey this feeling to the exhibition space’. Although Shantout (born 1991) is the youngest artist in the exhibition, her work demonstrates the persistence of protest and rebellion across generations, continuing the legacy of Abdul Hayy Mosallam Zarara (1933–2020). Zarara’s colourful bas-reliefs, created using a unique modelling technique with glued sawdust, depict Palestinian resistance. One particularly notable scene depicts a funeral procession, with figures in elaborate costumes carrying the body of a martyr wrapped in a keffiyeh. From the martyr’s body, wrapped in the Palestinian flag, emerge date palms, roses and a cactus, symbolising life and hope within the mourning village. This is the exhibition’s sole depiction of a human victim of the conflict, yet it is a representation in which death generates life. In contrast to prevailing media portrayals, ‘we refuse_d’ also declines to produce or display images of Palestinians as victims, instead empowering those most affected to represent themselves and their histories on their own terms.

Jumana Manna, Your Time Passes and Mine Has no Ends, 2025, installation view in ‘we refuse_d’, courtesy of the artist, Hollybush Gardens, London, and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar


           Nour Shantout, Evidence, 2025, view of the handcrafted electronic circuit for the sound piece, courtesy of the artist and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar

Covering issues as varied as censorship, colonial violence perpetrated through architecture and population and territorial control, landscape’s mutilation and nature’s resilience, as well as the urgency of memory, knowledge of the past and its transmission, the artworks by the fifteen artists exhibited in ‘we refuse_d’ speak to the vitality of artistic creation in times of conflict. Across generations, different ways of linking art and activism are on display. With remarkable finesse and commitment, ‘we refuse_d’ does not merely illustrate the theme of refusal but constitutes in itself a powerful act of opposition to silence and resignation. The exhibition is thus above all a celebration of art and artists’ agency, even in the darkest moments of world history in the face of war and all the violence that comes with it. Bucking the trend of censorship that continues to target artists, musicians, scholars and cultural workers in the West, the M HKA: Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp (Belgium) will host ‘we refuse_d’ from 13 March to 7 June 2026, giving European audiences the opportunity to reject, in turn, facile thinking and the lack of dialogue.

^[1]    See ‘A Long-wounded Land: Its Indigenous Orchids and their Caretakers – Nour Shantout and Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll in conversation’, Third Text Forum, Thinking Gaza: Critical Interventions, 4 July 2024

Nadine Atallah is an art historian and curator holding a PhD from the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. She specialises in modern and contemporary art in the Arab world, with expertise primarily in Egypt.