Colours Paint a Story of Absence

Colours Paint a Story of Absence is a retrospective of the Syrian painter Abdullatif Al Smoudi (1948 to 2005). It is held at the Sultan Bin Ali Al Owais Cultural Foundation, Grand Exhibition Hall, Dar Sultan Building, Rigga Street, Dubai. It opened on 9 September 2026, and the foundation presents it as marking twenty years since the artist's death.

According to the foundation's report of the opening, the exhibition brings together seventy-five paintings covering more than three decades of work. It includes the first public showing of Hama 1982, a mural-scale painting 345 cm long and 175 cm high. The foundation says Al Smoudi painted it at the time to commemorate the events in the Syrian city of Hama in the early 1980s. The curator, Tariq Al Smoudi, the artist's son, said at the opening that the painting had stayed hidden for decades. "Al Smoudi used symbols and letters to create a distinctive world of colour and ornamentation," the foundation writes.

Abdullatif Al Smoudi was born in Hama and studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus University, in the early 1970s. After moving to Sharjah he was one of the earliest members of the Emirates Fine Arts Society. He was an art consultant to the UAE Ministry of Interior, then worked with the Department of Culture and Information in Sharjah for twenty-five years. He took part in several editions of the Sharjah Biennial.

The opening was followed by a symposium on his work with the artists Hisham Al Madhloum and Talal Moualla, two of his close friends.