
Abdul Rahman Katanani poses in front of one of his embroidered barbed-wire panels. (Credit: Mansour Dib)
Each artist expresses a relationship with the world based on their personal history. Abdul Rahman Katanani's — born in 1983 in the Sabra refugee camp near Beirut and adopted by France due to his talent — is deeply marked by his Palestinian identity.
He became known for his silhouettes of children playing with slingshots, balls, or kites cut out of corrugated iron sheets, as well as his swirling sculptures in barbed wire, making the exclusive use of these hard and sharp materials — the only ones he had access to —t he foundational elements of his art, now recognized internationally.
A view of the exhibition 'The Story Portals' at the Saleh Barakat Gallery. (Credit: Mansour Dib)
When one thinks of Katanani, one immediately thinks of powerful pieces, drawing their contemporary aesthetic from painful work. Monumental installations too. Like 'Brainstorming,' which he presented in the fall of 2019 at the Saleh Barakat Gallery in Beirut, in which the Palestinian artist reproduced a fragment of the camp where he grew up, with its accumulation of makeshift homes, crossed by a maze of narrow passages. A large-scale installation, composed of zinc and corrugated iron sheets, wooden planks and mirrors reflecting the silhouettes of visitors to the gallery who were invited to immerse themselves in the suffocating atmosphere of these enclosed territories where entire populations are confined. Katanani created this work to allow fans of his art to experience, as close to reality as possible, the harsh living conditions that shaped his being and his art. But also to reflect (hence the title), on a more universal level, "on questions of precariousness and the constraint of living in closed spaces that arise today on a global scale," he told art critic Barbara Polla.
Facing this installation through which the artist unequivocally evoked his experience as a refugee locked in a limited territory, and even worse, his (former) status as a human with restricted freedoms, also stood a monumental 'Wave' in barbed wire.
Eight meters long and four meters high, this sculpture evoking a tidal wave complemented the installation describing the distress of a Palestinian population stuck in an existence full of frustrations and constraints, where the slightest attempt to escape, to venture towards broader horizons, confronts threatening dangers.
From metal tornadoes to cross-stitch panels
Five years later, here is the 40-year-old artist again, with spiky hair and a generous smile, presenting a new series of works titled 'The Story Portals' at Saleh Barakat, the gallery owner who discovered his talent. While the theme still ties back to his origins and the materials used remain the same, he's embarked on an unprecedented weaving work this time.
The artist at work and, to the left, the finished piece. (Credit: Mansour Dib)
This work was created a year before the crucial events of Oct. 7, 2023, when Katanani began a series of monumental panels inspired by Palestinian cross-stitch embroidery (tatreez), in response to a challenge posed by collector Basel Dalloul to reproduce in barbed wire and steel plates a series of tapestries once used to adorn the Gates of Galilee. Katanani embarked on it after crafting a specific loom himself, with the help of his brothers.
Drawing from motifs (amulet, camel's eye, cypress, palm tree, dates, or Canaanite star) and the embroidery and weaving techniques typical of his ancestral land, the artist initially replicated them identically in metallic tapestries before changing course entirely, moving towards abstraction, after the outbreak of war in Gaza.
Shaken by the violence then sweeping through the region, Katanani considered abandoning this more intimate and nostalgic work than what he was accustomed to producing. However, after a few weeks of pausing his work, he resumed the project with his metal sheets, and his sharp wires, sometimes corroded, other times colored, to express through a series of panels with deconstructed motifs, scattered as if in disarray, the sense of irreducible chaos that envelops his world.
Additionally working on sheets from oil barrels or the remains of out-of-order construction vehicles, his works also become receptacles for the symbols of a contemporaneity where natural elements of the region have been replaced by battles for dominance by major powers and large industries. Those of black gold in particular, the nerve of war.
Comprising nine gigantic panels (over 3.65 meters high and 2 meters wide), 'The Story Portals' invites viewers to explore an evolving narrative, reflecting the artist's personal confrontation with the contemporary regional reality made of brutal conflicts and paradoxically of an indomitable spirit of resilience opening possibilities.
Presented in a scenography highlighting their mix of grace and brutality, these monumental pieces are emblematic of a permanence of creation renewed in Katanani, as well as an extraordinary ability to always extract beauty from adversity.
'The Story Portals' by Abdul Rahman Katanani at the Saleh Barakat Gallery, Justinien Street, Clemenceau area, Beirut. Until Feb. 15.
This article was translated from L'Orient-Le Jour.