constant

all that is movement

There is a gentle contradiction that flows through the work of Lebanese painter and poet Afaf Zurayk,

a constancy and yet continual movement that grows and flourishes in the complex folds and spaces of

her paintings and her words.

White canvas holds, a line moving with and against, a sparse, caring motion. There is an endlessness

to the spaces that Zurayk deftly shapes, a glimmer of emergence, then disappearance, re-emergence,

a quiet skimming of the surface of form, experience and emotion, then again submergence, coming

up again as if for air, breath. This is how a life might be described, all of life.

While this work enters with such lightness, as if alighting at the very corner of thought, yet if

confronted, or perhaps just looked at squarely, the experience deepens, continues, gives more, does

not disappear in the moment, recedes only to return.

This doubling, the glimpse and the continuation, the constant and enduring, the light and ephemeral.

To know the way to depth from light and back again.

The subtle and mutable line the material life.

In the words of Zurayk, containing the darkness and contained by it.

Afaf Zurayk is a Lebanese American artist, writer and educator. Her artistic and writing practices seek

transparency in depicting the color of light, guiding the audience through turbulence towards

acceptance. Zurayk graduated with a B.A. in Fine Arts (with distinction) from the American University

of Beirut in 1970 and earned an M.A. in Fine Arts from Harvard University.

Zurayk has exhibited her art extensively and has been reviewed in The Washington Post, the

Washington Review, Al-Hayat and L’Orient–Le Jour among other publications. Her art is in the

collections of the British Museum, London, UK; Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE; the Sursock

Museum, Beirut, Lebanon; and Darat al - Funun, Amman, Jordan. She is represented by Saleh Barakat

Gallery in Beirut, Lebanon.