Closing Reception - The Lost Paintings: A Prelude to Return

Help us celebrate the closing of The Lost Paintings: A Prelude to Return at UVA's Overlook Gallery (175 Washington St., Brighton, MA 02135)!

What to Expect:

5:30-6:45 PM: Gallery Time with Guidance from the Curatorial Team & Visiting Artists
6:45-7:00 PM: Light Dinner sponsored by Bread Thyme
7:00-8:30 PM: Artist Panel moderated by Michael Maria (Director of Programming, Boston Palestine Film Festival) featuring Joëlle Tomb (co-curator, Lost Paintings Project) and 5 exhibiting artists: Khaled Jarrar (NYC and Jenin), Nora Sayyad (Helsinki), Iman Jabrah (Cincinnati), Sama Alshaibi (Tucson) and Doris Bittar (San Diego)
8:30-10:00 PM: Performances by Songs of Liberation and El Ärkitekt

Light food and drinks will be provided by Bread Thyme

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This traveling exhibition gathers 53 artists from Palestine and its diaspora across time and borders to reimagine the missing works of Maroun Tomb, a Palestinian-Lebanese artist, whose 1947 exhibition in Haifa was lost amid the mass displacement and dispossession of the Palestinians during the Nakba. The works resurrect a moment that was nearly erased until it was discovered in archival documents. The exhibition spans two Boston venues—the Brookline Arts Center and Unbound Visual Arts—and is presented in partnership with the Boston Palestine Film Festival. It is produced with the support from the Kone Foundation, the Fouad & May Tomb Foundation for the Arts, the Mass Cultural Council, and private donors.

More about the exhibition here.

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Songs of Liberation is a Boston-based protest folk band, fronted by Palestinian American Juliet Salameh and dedicated to liberation in Falastine and liberation for ALL. They know another world is possible and will dream it into existence through music, including original and vintage protest songs. Their spirally violin textures and tender vocal harmonies are filled with love for the people, the planet, and the movements that serve life. Their music is healing, uplifting, tender to community, while fearlessly resistant to empire, capitalism, and bigotry of any kind.

El Ärkitekt is a genre-defying musician and multidisciplinary artist who blends intricate lyricism, profound storytelling, and innovative production. Rooted in the Palestinian experience, his music fuses traditional Arabic sounds with experimental elements, electronic production, and hip-hop influences, transforming sound into a powerful form of resistance.

His debut album, Boosaleh, explores themes of displacement, identity, and resilience through collaborations with Arab artists across various disciplines. With a fresh take on Arabic Rap and Hip Hop, El Ärkitekt pushes sonic boundaries while preserving cultural heritage. Through multidisciplinary projects that fuse music, visual art, and performance, he invites audiences to explore new dimensions of sound and storytelling, reshaping the future of Arabic music.

Michael Maria is the Director of Programming at the Boston Palestine Film Festival and was previously the festival’s Director of Operations.

Joëlle Tomb is an abstract painter, art advocate and curator based in Newton, MA. She was born in Lebanon and raised in Saudi Arabia and Canada, where she gained her Master’s in Education. Her grandfather, Maroun Tomb, was a prolific painter and her father Fouad Tomb is a modern Lebanese painter who dedicated his life to arts education. She served as a docent at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston for three years and facilitated various public art projects. She served on several board including the New Art Centre & Art Resource Collaborative for Kids. She also presides over the Fouad & May Tomb Foundation for the Arts, her family’s international art platform dedicated to preserving the family’s artistic heritage and to promoting art for humanity. Joëlle’s first solo exhibition took place in Newton City Hall (2019), and since then she has participated in several group shows locally and internationally. Her curatorial work includes, Mehswar “A Painter’s Return” (2022) at the Nearby Gallery in Newton, MA; Meshwar of an artist from Palestine to Lebanon: Dialogue between two generations Maroun & Fouad Tomb (2023) at Dar El Nimer for Arts & Culture in Beirut, Lebanon; and Aswat: Elevating Arab Women Voices (2023) at the New Art Center in Newton, MA.

Khaled Jarrar is an artist who has lived multiple lives. He studied interior design, worked as a clandestine carpenter in Nazareth and enlisted in intensive military training to end up as Yasser Arafat’s personal bodyguard for 25 years. He made the shift from the military to the arts by entering the field of photography and eventually getting his MFA at the University of Arizona. Jarrar works in a diverse range of mediums to explore and alternate perspectives surrounding identity, disappearance, and memory, unpacking their narrative limitations. His work addresses global issues in symbolic and transmutational ways through performance, film, installation, photography and sculpture.

Nora Sayyad is a Finnish-Palestinian photographer, artist, and visual reporter whose experimental lens pushes the boundaries of documentary and fiction storytelling. Born in Sweden and based in Helsinki, she weaves culture, identity, and intersectionality into bold narratives that challenge perception and center empathy. Sayyad’s work straddles human rights, wellbeing, and the complex liminal spaces of lived experience. Sayyad holds a Master’s degree from Aalto University, Finland and lives in Helsinki, Finland.

Iman Jabrah holds a BFA in New Media from the New Kentucky University School of Art, an MFA from the China Academy of Art in Hangzhuo, and was awarded the Lin FengMian Bronze Award at the prestigious Zhejiang Exhibition Hall. Jabrah touches on themes of women, migration, grief, danger, care and healing– often working in found materials that imbue with her life experiences. She has exhibited internationally, served as Researcher-in-residence at the Praksis and Peace Research Institute of Oslo, and received the Artwave Truth and Reconciliation Grant to curate a show at the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Sama Alshaibi is a Palestinian-Iraqi artist whose work incorporates photography, video and installation. Her practice explores the notion of aftermath—the fragmentation and dispossession that violates the individual and community following the destruction of the social, natural and built environment. Alshaibi is a Guggenheim Fellow and a 2023 Art Matters Betty Parsons Fellow. Her exhibitions include the 55th Venice Biennale, the 2020 State of the Art (Crystal Bridges Museum of Art), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto), among others. Alshaibi is based in the United States, where she is a Regents Professor of Art at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Doris Bittar is an award-winning artist, writer, educator, and community organizer living and working in Southern California. Thematically, her paintings and projects often link cultural patterns– which she describes as cultural DNA– to migration crossing political boundaries. Bittar’s textured and improvisational paintings from this period reach back into personal history and are anchored within the haze of colonial legacies. Her art is housed in international museum collections and she is the first Arab American California Arts Council Legacy Artist. Bittar has taught for 25 years in several American universities and international institutions and has authored a number of scholarly essays and opinion pieces.

Image Credits: Olya B.