Palestinian art is travelling far beyond the places where it was created. From Ramallah to Dubai, and onward to collectors across Europe, the United States and beyond, a new generation of Palestinian artists is finding an increasingly international audience — while continuing to negotiate questions of memory, identity, displacement and belonging.
At the centre of this movement is Zawyeh Gallery, founded by Ziad Anani in Ramallah in 2013. What began with exhibitions staged inside private homes has grown into a gallery operating between Ramallah and Dubai, with its Dubai space located on Alserkal Avenue, one of the region’s leading contemporary art destinations. The Dubai gallery opened in 2020, giving Palestinian artists a new platform within the Gulf’s rapidly expanding art scene.
The story, however, is about much more than a gallery expanding its reach. It is about how Palestinian art is being encountered by audiences who may have little or no direct connection to Palestine — and how collectors are increasingly responding to the work beyond its political or geographical context.
One of the artists at the heart of this conversation is Mohammed Joha, born in Gaza and based in Europe for more than two decades. His Houselessness series transforms fragments of fabric, paper, cardboard and salvaged materials into layered compositions that sit somewhere between abstraction and personal archive.
The materials carry their own histories. Some were recovered; others came from the artist’s own clothes. Their significance becomes even more poignant in light of Joha’s experience of losing his home in Gaza, where more than 500 of his paintings were buried beneath the rubble.
Rather than illustrating loss directly, Joha allows it to emerge through torn surfaces, exposed seams and stitched fragments. The work becomes a physical meditation on what remains when a sense of home has been disrupted.
His journey is part of a much larger movement.
According to Zawyeh founder Ziad Anani, more than half of the gallery’s clients are Palestinians living abroad, including collectors in the UAE, United States, United Kingdom and Europe. Yet the Dubai location has also opened the door to a different audience, including Emirati and international collectors from countries such as Russia, Singapore and Thailand.
Some arrive already familiar with Palestinian artists. Others encounter them for the first time.
That distinction is important. For Anani, introducing Palestinian art to new collectors is not simply about selling a work. It is also about creating a deeper understanding of the artist and the context behind the piece.
The reach of the gallery is equally visible from Ramallah. Around 90 per cent of sales from Zawyeh’s exhibitions there now go to buyers outside Palestine, with some collectors purchasing works online without seeing them in person until they arrive at their homes thousands of kilometres away.
The prices themselves reveal the breadth of the market. Works by younger artists can begin at around $400–500, while works by established names can reach six figures. The gallery has presented works by artists such as Suleiman Mansour and Samia Halaby, with individual works reaching prices of more than $150,000.
But the growing market for Palestinian art is not defined by price alone.
Increasingly, collectors are responding to a visual language that extends beyond familiar images of Palestine. Landscapes, embroidery and recognisable symbols remain important, but contemporary Palestinian artists are also working through abstraction, conceptual art, sculpture and personal memory.
This is particularly evident in the work of Bashar Khalaf, whose practice is deeply rooted in Ramallah.
Khalaf has spent around 35 years in the city, witnessing its buildings rise, its streets change and its physical boundaries expand. His work uses these transformations as a way of considering the broader political, social and economic changes that have shaped Palestinian life.
His exhibition The Field of Dreams, first presented at the A.M. Qattan Foundation in Ramallah, is scheduled to be shown at Zawyeh Gallery in Dubai in September 2026.
Steel is a recurring element in Khalaf’s work, often appearing in tangled structures that seem simultaneously under construction and on the verge of collapse. His sculptures create an uneasy dialogue between construction and destruction, protection and confinement.
At the centre of his practice is the relationship between the individual and the collective — between personal identity and the larger communities and histories that shape it.
Khalaf also challenges the expectations surrounding Palestinian art. There is, he suggests, sometimes a preconceived image of what Palestinian art should look like. While he recognises the importance of the symbols and visual language developed by earlier generations, he argues that artists today are living through a different moment — and naturally producing different work.
That evolution is perhaps one of the most significant developments within the contemporary Palestinian art scene.
For Reham Shaheen, a Gaza-born artist who has lived in Dubai for more than two decades, Palestine appears not through a fixed visual vocabulary but through memory.
Dubai has become her home and the place where her artistic practice has developed. Yet memories of her childhood in Deir al-Balah continue to surface in her paintings: the sea, palm trees, orange trees, horses, books, family and the colour blue.
Her relationship with Palestine is therefore deeply personal. It is something carried rather than simply represented.
Shaheen's work also points to an important tension within the growing visibility of Palestinian art. Greater international attention does not necessarily translate into greater opportunities for artists. Visibility can bring recognition, but artists still require the spaces, resources and institutional support needed to create.
This is where galleries such as Zawyeh increasingly see their role extending beyond the commercial.
Dubai has become an important meeting point for the region's art world, bringing together galleries, collectors, artists and international visitors. Its position within Alserkal Avenue gives Palestinian artists access to an audience that stretches beyond the Gulf and into the wider international art market.
And the movement is not limited to Dubai.
Palestinian artists are appearing in galleries and exhibitions across Europe and the Middle East, while others are participating in major international events, including the Venice Biennale. Their presence is becoming increasingly visible within a global contemporary art landscape.
For Anani, however, the next stage is not simply about reaching more collectors. Palestinian art also needs a stronger presence within museums, institutions, major exhibitions and international art events.
That shift — from visibility to institutional recognition — could determine what comes next.
For decades, Palestinian artists have created work through political upheaval, displacement and profound personal loss. Today, their work is travelling further: across borders, through galleries, into private collections and onto the walls of audiences who may encounter Palestine through art before they encounter it through anything else.
From exhibitions once held inside homes in Ramallah to a gallery on Dubai's Alserkal Avenue, the journey is a remarkable one.
Palestinian art is no longer simply travelling outward. It is entering new conversations — and asking the world to look beyond the expected image of Palestine, towards the complexity, beauty and individuality of the artists themselves.
