Samia Halaby is a pioneering Palestinian artist, scholar, and activist whose six-decade career has redefined the scope and politics of abstract painting. Born in Jerusalem and based in New York City since the 1970s, Halaby is widely recognised as one of the most important figures in contemporary Arab art. Alongside her artistic practice, Halaby is a committed educator and writer. She was the first woman to teach at Yale University’s School of Art and has authored several texts, including Liberation Art of Palestine (2004), a foundational work on Palestinian visual culture. 

Rooted in a lifelong investigation of abstraction, her practice is grounded in continuous experimentation, drawing from sources as varied as Islamic architecture, Russian Constructivism and Abstract Expressionism. Halaby coined the term ‘Arabic abstraction’, challenging Western hierarchies to reclaim forms historically dismissed as decorative, advocating for their conceptual and structural complexity as a visual language grounded in social struggle. Most of the paintings included in this space were part of Samia Halaby’s cancelled retrospective at Indiana University at Bloomington’s Eskenazi Museum – a month before its scheduled opening in February 2024. Her presence in we refused_d is an homage to her oeuvre.

we refuse_d is produced by Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, on the occasion of their 15th anniversary, and presented in partnership with M HKA.
Curated by Nadia Radwan and Vasıf Kortun.