Marwan - Exile, art, and quiet activism at Christie's.

I went to Christie’s in London not knowing much about Marwan’s work. I went with a Palestinian artist, and that shaped how I saw the exhibition. As we moved from room to room, I learned that Marwan, born in Syria, living most of his life in Berlin; had also worked in Gaza, collaborating with artists and communities there. Suddenly, his paintings of faces weren’t just faces. They were maps. They carried whole histories across borders, with emotions stitched into every line and colour.

The exhibition spans decades, but the portraits from the 1970s held me longest. The brushwork is alive, sometimes urgent and restless, sometimes soft and uncertain, like the paint itself is breathing. These portraits are not just images of individuals; they are landscapes of exile, places where identity and displacement meet.

Exile is often thought of as absence of home, of place, of belonging. But here, exile becomes something more complex. Marwan’s portraits reflect not only what is lost but what endures. The faces carry a quiet resilience, a memory of places and people fractured by history but still deeply present. His art expresses exile not as a passive condition but as an active, shaping force in how identity and creativity evolve.

One room downstairs, visible from the street, holds three early paintings depicting Palestinian people. These works face outward, toward the street, creating an inside-out dialogue that caught my attention. This setup makes us think about visibility. Here, the paintings claim space both inside the gallery and out in public view, challenging who is seen and heard.

This tension extends to the art world, too. How often and when are artists like Marwan, who live in exile or at the margins, given full visibility? The exhibition itself, by centering Marwan’s voice through the curatorship of Dr. Ridha Moumni, an Arab woman living in England, matters. It means the story of exile here is being shaped by someone who understands it in her own way.

A powerful choice is that none of the works are for sale. This removes the market’s pressure, inviting visitors to engage without distraction. The art is framed as witness and memory rather than a commodity. It asks us to see, to feel, and to think about exile and displacement beyond headlines and statistics. This ethical stance shapes the whole experience, making it less about ownership and more about connection.

Marwan’s activism is subtle but potent. His portraits don’t shout protest; instead, they demand recognition of humanity. In the 1960s and 70s, his paintings of Palestinian fidayeen present them as individuals, youthful, vulnerable, and dignified, resisting easy categorisation as symbols of violence or political struggle. Later, through teaching and founding a summer academy for artists from the Middle East, Marwan built bridges across communities separated by conflict and displacement.

This quiet activism invites viewers to see beyond labels and to recognise shared humanity. It challenges us to hold space for stories that are often silenced or simplified.

Marwan: A Soul in Exile is a conversation about identity, loss, and resilience told through brushstrokes that pulse with life. It asks us to look closely, not just at faces on canvas but at the borders we draw around ourselves and others.