Spanning more than five decades of combined artistic practice, Lines of Belonging brings into dialogue two bodies of work that, while rooted in distinct geographies and sensibilities, share a fundamental conviction: that art remains inseparable from lived experience. Rather than merging two artistic voices into a single narrative, the exhibition allows each practice to resonate alongside the other. The exhibition reveals unexpected affinities between the painters who have each spent a lifetime shaping deeply personal yet universally human visual worlds.
For Fawzi Baalbaki, the painted line is an act of emotional survival. His figures, animals, and intertwined forms emerge through simplified gestures that move between abstraction and recognition, inviting the viewer to complete what the line leaves open. His compositions hold tenderness, solitude, companionship, and fleeting moments of joy within surfaces of deliberate lightness.
Salman Al Malek approaches painting as both cultural memory and contemporary proposition. His practice negotiates the relationship between authenticity and modernity, giving rise to works that are deeply rooted in social consciousness while remaining open to formal experimentation. For Al Malek, art must hold a purpose — even when expressed through abstraction or colour.
