Hayyan Monawar is a Qatar-born, Palestinian visual artist. His work is notable for surrealist and photorealistic depictions which aspire to reveal his subject’s fullest dimensions. Representing a variety of scenes, Monawar’s visual articulation often revisits stories and subtracts the figure from its original course into new realms. His use of repetition aims to comprehend the complex proportions of a momentary event that leaves lasting impact on humans. These repeated elements are constructed from present reality, individual memories, and intergenerational trauma. Revealed in an unhurried manner, Monawar’s technique originates in segments using diptych, squares, and geometry. By following this approach, the repetitive fragments, cut to scale, are developed by applying layers that detach the central figure from the background. In each iteration, the scale is negotiated. The resulting work exists on its own, but continues in another production creating a series of reappearing symbols.
In the ongoing series ‘Yellow Hoodie’ which the artist started in 2020, Monawar developed first a figure of a child surrounded by sky. Then he introduced additional figures, while abstracting the features of the child, amplifying what remained of his body: a yellow hoodie and an unfamiliar suspended environment with objects that signify loss. This loss is connected to land and bodies under a settler-colonial regime in occupied Palestine. The color yellow becomes a portrait of sorts, revealing complex juxtapositions.
Regarding his doodling technique Monawar says: “the image that I have drawn is not gloomy. For it has gained the color of a clear blue sky embroidered with white clouds. It is an image full of purity and serenity of the soul supported with eternal hope”.
Regarding his doodling technique Monawar says: “the image that I have drawn is not gloomy. For it has gained the color of a clear blue sky embroidered with white clouds. It is an image full of purity and serenity of the soul supported with eternal hope”.