SAWA

SAWA is an installation art exhibition by Rajwa Ali and Karma bint Abbas, shown in Amman at the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts. It opened in Building 2 at 6pm on Monday 5 October 2026 and runs to 10 November 2026. The gallery's photographs show a tall column of decorated fabric hanging from the ceiling of an orange-walled room, with long strips falling to the floor.

In those photographs the strips reach the floorboards and spread into curved white shapes edged with small triangles. The cloth carries painted or printed motifs, among them palm trees and butterflies, in greens, browns and pale blues. Textile pieces hang on the walls near the entrance, beside a wall text that gives the title in Latin and Arabic script, SAWA and سوا.

The gallery's announcement names both artists but does not say which works belong to which of them, and it gives no curator. Karma bint Abbas works with textiles. She needle-felts wool onto canvas or fabric and describes wool as her paint. She studied at Pratt Institute in New York, and her first solo exhibition was in New York.

Founded in 1980 by the Royal Society of Fine Arts, the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts holds a permanent collection of more than 3000 works. Building 2 devotes four floors to that collection. The gallery is open every day except Friday and closes on official holidays. Tickets cost 1 JD for Jordanians and residents and 7 JD for non-Jordanians, and students of Jordanian schools, universities and institutes enter free.