Walls have long been potent symbols of seemingly intractable political differences: from the Great Wall of China and Hadrian’s Wall in northern Britain to the Berlin Wall that marked the separation between East and West Germany in the Cold War. Usually hard to surmount physically, such walls are nonetheless ripe for artistic subversion. This is what Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar does in his first solo exhibition in the UK, at the Ayyam Gallery in London, where he is showing concrete sculptures of footballs and other sporting paraphernalia made from materials secretly chiselled from the controversial Israeli West Bank wall or barrier, as well as a witty video in which the wall is used as a badminton net. The pièce de résistance, however, is the concrete wall that he has built across the length of the gallery and through which visitors are invited to clamber when they enter.
Established by cousins Khaled and Hisham Samawi, the Ayyam Gallery has had a home in Damascus, Syria, since 2006 but launched new spaces in Jeddah and London earlier this year. If you want to get an idea about current directions in Middle Eastern art, its website is a good place to start your investigations – as is the upcoming issue of Elephant.
Whole in the Wall will run until 3 August 2013.
Ayyam Gallery, London, 143 New Bond Street, 1st Floor, W1S 2TP
All images courtesy of the gallery and the artist.
