PALESTINE 1943 (SYRIAN)-JORDAN 2002.

“Inspired by Islamic civilization, he starts working as an artist in Cairo in 1977 before going to Amman to be Artistic Director and Curator at the Museum of Popular Traditions.

Amazed by the pureness of Jordanian distant places, he spends long research stays around tribal areas and takes part in the archaeological excavations of the Near Eastern French Archaeology Institute, the University of Sydney and the British Institute. […]

His work, figurative, formal, based on a realist stroke indicates a patient observation of the places and emblems of the Arabic and classical worlds. It imparts a ‘nationalist’ vision, enlightened by the Near Eastern sun.

However, Ali Jabri’s work expresses the cultural fragmentation of his country through harsher, urbanistic canvas, suffused with an atmosphere of interruption, dissonance, loss. The dichotomy persists between ancient beauty and fragments of present times. The expression of the cut is also obvious in the heterogeneous sources of inspiration: Antiquity, China, Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, Renaissance, Palladio, Picasso, Mies van der Rohe, contemporary design, art and architecture of Islam …”