Silent Art

Orient Gallery in Amman presents "Silent Art", a solo exhibition by Saman Zahawi, from 6 to 29 October 2026. The Baghdad-born artist and architect shows drawings in black ink on paper alongside three-dimensional works in mixed media, most of them made in 2026. The exhibition opens on 6 October at 5.30pm and forms part of Amman Design Week.

The show turns on a pairing set out in the gallery's text: what a work shows on its surface and what lies under it. On the surface, where his training as an architect comes through, are line, rhythm, mass, the placing of empty space and the structure of a composition. Under them sit meaning, feeling and the reading each visitor brings. Visitors are left to find their own path from one to the other.

Zahawi draws without preparatory sketches and lets the hand set the course of each line. He keeps to black and white, and builds his compositions from the contrast of filled and empty areas. One square drawing measures 150 by 150 cm. A dense field of black dots and script covers its upper part and gives way to a pale band crossed by fine lines. The ink works include narrow strips up to 150 cm long and a sheet of 150 by 250 cm. The largest of the mixed-media pieces measures 166 by 64 by 45 cm. A few earlier works, dated 2009, 2024 and 2025, are shown with the new ones.

Zahawi was born in Baghdad in 1967 and is described as an Iraqi-Canadian artist and architect. His work draws on Arabic calligraphy, and he works mainly in black ink on white paper, with canvas prints and marble sculptures as further outlets. He showed at Orient Gallery in 2022. In 2024 his work went to Khawla Art and Culture in Abu Dhabi and, with CITCO, to Salone del Mobile in Milan.