Oussama Diab

Oussama Diab (b. 1977, Damascus, Syria) is a Palestinian-Syrian-Dutch painter based in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He makes paintings and drawings in many formats, including works in mixed media on canvas. Figures and portraits stand against dense, patterned grounds, painted with loose, gestural brushwork and strong colour.

Diab graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Damascus University in 2002. He worked in Syria and Lebanon before moving to Europe in 2015. He describes his work as autobiographical. The portrait and the tableau vivant recur, along with the search for humanity through suffering, loss and war. His Reimagined series, which he began in 2013 with New Guernica, reworks paintings by Picasso, Van Gogh and Anthony van Dyck. It includes Middle Eastern Guernica (2026) and Moses and the Serpent, after Anthony van Dyck (2024).

Ayyam Gallery gave him solo exhibitions in Damascus in 2009, in Dubai in 2010 and 2012, and in Beirut in 2010 and 2015. In Europe he has shown at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice (2015), the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2018) and Museum Arnhem (2024 and 2025). Artbooth Gallery, Abu Dhabi, presented Reimagined in 2026. He received the Galatea Kunstprijs in 2021 and two grants from the Mondriaan Fonds. His work is held by Museum Arnhem, the Province of Gelderland art collection and the Dubai Collection.