Al Markhiya Gallery, at its headquarters in “Fire Station: Artists in Residence”, in cooperation with the Dalloul Artists Forum, will open the art exhibition “Lines of Belonging”, which brings together artists Salman Al Malik from Qatar and Fawzi Baalbaki from Lebanon, the evening after tomorrow, with the exhibition continuing until August 16.
The exhibition presents a visual dialogue between two prominent artistic experiences, whose owners have dedicated more than five decades of artistic practice to developing their own visual language. Their works, despite the differences in backgrounds and styles, meet in their interest in humanity, memory, and belonging, and in their vision of art as a space for reflection and expression of the human experience.
The exhibition explores the relationship between form, line, and color, through works that open the way for multiple interpretations reflecting the richness and uniqueness of the two experiences, in an artistic intersection that examines identity, emotion, and the evocation of memory.
The exhibition's valuation text indicates that both artists, Salman Al-Malik and Fawzi Baalbaki, developed throughout their artistic careers a unique visual language stemming from human presence, emotional memory, and a belief in art's ability to convey meaning beyond direct representation.
The text goes on to say that the artist Salman Al-Malik deals with art as a space for cultural memory and contemporary vision at the same time, as his works stem from an internal flow of feelings and perceptions, with their connection to a clear social and cultural awareness, seeking to achieve a balance between the authenticity and modernity of art, and between local roots and contemporary visual transformations.
As for the artist Fawzi Baalbaki, he transforms the line into an act of emotional survival, where his characters, animals, bicycles, and intertwined forms appear through a highly sensitive visual reduction that oscillates between abstraction and allusion, while behind the lightness of the compositions lies an emotional intensity that evokes familiarity, friendship, love, loneliness, and fleeting joy.
The exhibition does not seek to merge two different experiences into one narrative, but rather allows each experience to coexist with the other, revealing the hidden intersections between two artists who spent their lives building personal visual worlds that are, in essence, human and universal.
The exhibition offers a more tranquil and profound space, in which forms regain their ability to carry feeling, and abstraction remains close to humanity, while art continues as a bridge between memory, place, and the possibility of shared experience.
June 14, 2026
