Bringing together three Arab artists, the exhibition traces the ways in which personal recollections become vessels for collective history.
JEDDAH
What survives when places change, generations pass and memories begin to fade?
That question lies at the heart of “Between Mist and Meridian,” a major exhibition at Hafez Gallery that explores how artists transform memory into a living archive of culture, identity and belonging.
Bringing together Yemeni painter Hakim al-Akel, Saudi artist Abdelsattar al-Mussa and Kuwaiti cultural icon Thuraya al-Baqsami, the exhibition traces the ways in which personal recollections become vessels for collective history.
The three artists share an important connection: all studied at Moscow’s Surikov State Academy of Fine Arts. Yet rather than producing a common aesthetic, that experience gave rise to three distinct artistic voices united by a deeper concern with preserving human experience.
The exhibition unfolds as a conversation between landscapes, people and inherited traditions, examining how cultural memory survives through artistic expression.
Akel’s contribution is perhaps the most deeply autobiographical. His paintings return repeatedly to the mountains of Yemen, where women appear and disappear through drifting mist like figures from folklore.
In an artist statement accompanying the exhibition, he recalls women descending from mountaintops at dawn and returning at dusk, their voices echoing across valleys and fields. Those memories form the emotional foundation of his work.
For Akel, memory is not simply a subject but a medium. Colour emerges in fragments and flashes, much like recollection itself. His paintings inhabit a space between dream and reality, transforming remembered landscapes into poetic meditations on place, loss and belonging.
Mussa’s work offers a quieter but equally powerful reflection on memory. His monochromatic figurative paintings strip away excess detail, directing attention to human emotion and social experience.
The Saudi artist’s figures appear suspended outside time, carrying the weight of personal and collective histories. Rather than documenting specific individuals, the works evoke entire communities and generations, preserving their dignity and resilience through a visual language of restraint and clarity.
The exhibition expands further through the work of Baqsami, whose paintings celebrate women as central figures in cultural continuity.
A pioneering force in Gulf art since the 1970s, Baqsami draws upon folklore, daily life and Arab traditions to construct richly layered narratives. Her female figures embody strength, memory and cultural agency, challenging conventional representations and positioning women as active architects of identity.
Her work reflects a career that spans painting, printmaking and literature, making her one of the most influential cultural voices in the Gulf.
Together, the exhibition presents memory not as nostalgia but as a dynamic force that shapes contemporary identity. The artists show how stories, traditions and landscapes continue to influence the present, even when transformed by distance, migration or time.
The exhibition also reflects Hafez Gallery’s broader mission of highlighting leading artistic voices from Saudi Arabia and the wider Arab world. Since its founding in 2014, the gallery has become an important platform for both established and emerging artists, fostering cultural exchange across the region and beyond.
In “Between Mist and Meridian,” memory becomes more than recollection. It becomes a bridge between generations, a record of cultural continuity and a reminder that identity is constantly being renewed through art.
