"La vie, à l’image de l’océan, ondule au rythme inlassable de la joie et de la perte, de l’espoir et de la détresse."
(Yafil Mubarak, Curator)
Waves of Sorrow
Life, like the ocean, is a constant ebb and flow of emotions—an unrelenting rhythm of joy, loss, hope, and sorrow. This exhibition, Waves of Sorrow, invites the viewer to traverse the tempestuous waters of human existence as seen through the eyes of two Sudanese artists: Rashid Diab, a veteran colourist known for his chronicles of migration and war, and Dar Al Naim, a younger visionary dissecting identity and the human condition. Together, they explore the profound sorrows that arise from the ravages of war and displacement whether these be physically belligerent or mental angsts, offering us a multi-generational perspective on grief, resilience, and the fragile threads that bind us to our homeland and identity.
For Rashid Diab, sorrow is spatial, a tension between the heaviness of chaos and the fleeting balance of order. Through luminous renderings of women draped in the traditional Sudanese toub, Diab constructs scenes that are both grounded in cultural memory and suspended in the liminal spaces of migration. These women, bearers of family values and silent absorbers of war’s trauma, move through landscapes imbued with a tender resilience. Their figures, though delicate, anchor the narrative, embodying not only survival but the invisible labour of emotional endurance. The "Out of focus" series captures these women as they traverse dimensions of time and space, portraying them as eternal wayfarers caught between worlds, between the past, the present, and the uncertain horizons of exile.
In stark contrast, Dar Al Naim’s works erupt with unbridled chaos; vivid, layered compositions where the abstract collides with the figurative. Emerging from dense, textured backgrounds, human figures take shape, as though wrested from the depths of existential questions. Their faces and forms are repositories of sorrow—yet their anguish is not fixed; it pulsates with the unresolved tensions of identity, belonging, and the universality of suffering. Dar Al Naim’s palette is electric, mirroring the turmoil of a mind grappling with the human condition. The works challenge us not to passively observe but to feel…to inhabit the artist’s inquiry into what it means to live, to lose, and to search for meaning amid chaos.
While their artistic approaches differ one seeking balance in the midst of disorder, the other amplifying disorder to unearth deeper truths Rashid Diab and Dar Al Naim are united in their shared sorrow for a homeland ravaged by war. This sorrow transcends the personal and the generational; it becomes a collective lament for the fragility of human connection and the violence that fractures it.
Yet, within this grief, there is also a profound reflection on resilience. In Diab’s measured, graceful compositions, resilience is a quiet force, woven into the fabric of tradition and carried by the women who walk steadfastly through the storms of displacement. In Dar Al Naims’s chaotic brilliance, resilience emerges as defiance, as an unyielding quest for identity and truth amidst the wreckage.
Together, these two artists present sorrow as a wave, a force that shapes, erodes, and transforms. Each wave carries the weight of history, the ache of loss, and the resilience of survival. And like the waves of the ocean, sorrow is both destructive and generative; it takes, but it also gives. It gives us art. A language to confront what is too vast, too painful, too infinite to articulate in words alone.
Through their works, Rashid Diab and Dar Al Naim offer not just a reflection of sorrow but an invitation: to wade into its depths, to confront its chaos, to bathe in its agony and perhaps, to find within it the seeds of a new understanding, empathy, and hope.
Yafil Mubarak
Commissaire de l'exposition
