On November 29, 1947, an exhibition that includes 53 oil work by the Palestinian-Lebanese artist Maroun Tomb opened at a Maronite church in Haifa, Palestine. It could be Tomb’s final exhibition within the nation. The present’s opening date additionally marked the United Nations’s approval of Decision 181, the Partition Plan of Palestine, which finally led to the Nakba. 750,000 Palestinians, together with Tomb and his household, had been expelled from their homeland or pressured into exile. Most of his physique of labor, together with the oil work in that exhibition, was misplaced when Israel annexed Haifa.
A brand new Montreal exhibition, The Misplaced Work: A Prelude to Return, can pay homage to these 53 misplaced work, that includes that precise variety of works by all completely different artists and spanning a spread of disciplines, together with drawing, sculpture, and video. Curated by Rula Khoury, Joëlle Tomb — Maroun’s granddaughter — and Haidi Motola in collaboration with the establishment Montréal, arts interculturels (MAI), the exhibition is on view at two areas: MAI and articule.
Exhibition announcement for Maroun Tomb’s 1947 Haifa present (courtesy the Tomb household archives)
Guidelines for Maroun Tomb’s 1947 Haifa present (courtesy the Tomb household archives)
For the curators, sharing The Misplaced Work through the ongoing genocide of Gaza initially appeared troubling. “The idea for this exhibition was born at the beginning of 2021,” says Motola. “Now, when we are witnessing with horror the ultimate colonial violence of erasure and destruction in the form of the genocide and ethnic cleansing, it suddenly felt … futile and irrelevant.” With time and suggestions from the artists, Motola finally felt in another way. “The urgency of continuing to talk about Palestine, the ongoing Nakba, the colonial violence, and resistance became stronger.”
The origin story of The Misplaced Work is one in all serendipity and coincidence. Joëlle is the eldest of Tomb’s grandchildren, and “grew up surrounded by his presence.” His work adorned the partitions of all 5 of his kids’s houses, reworking them into “miniature museums filled with his vision, colors, and spirit.” Although Tomb was identified to be a prolific painter in Lebanon, Joëlle was stunned to be taught throughout her analysis that he’d been an lively exhibiting artist in Palestine, too. By likelihood, she met Motola, whose grandfather, additionally an artist, was a pal of Tomb’s in Haifa.
Bayan Kiwan, “The Cake Makers” (2025), oil on canvas
“Tomb and his family belonged to the Maronite community,” Motola explains. “His uncle was the head of the community, and in the old church book, you can find traces of the family history. I discovered the archival documents revealing the story of Tomb’s lost exhibition while working on another project about Haifa and my family archives.”
Just some paperwork from the present stay, together with a full checklist of labor titles. The items by the 53 collaborating artists who had been invited to mirror on this guidelines are titled after or in response to Tomb’s. “The invitation to reimagine these titles opens the possibility to imagine not only what was, but also what could be,” Motola says. Lots of the artists are from Palestine — “Arab ’48 [Palestinians who now live within the borders of the Israeli state since its founding in 1948], the West Bank, Gaza,” says Khoury — or a part of the diaspora. A few of Tomb’s kin, together with his son Fouad Tomb and his granddaughters Lorena and Sandra Tomb, are included.
Fouad Tomb, “The Garden” (2024), oil on canvas
Collaborating artist Joanna Barakat was impressed by Tomb’s title “Zoo Garden – Cairo” as a result of her personal father was as soon as photographed there within the Nineteen Thirties. “She painted this photograph of him,” Khoury shares. Artist and designer Mado Kelleyan created a digital actuality expertise telling the story of her grandparents, who, like Tomb, lived in Haifa. Painter and collagist Raed Issa, who not too long ago escaped Gaza, was capable of take a collection of work and small drawings he began making in 2023 with him. “This is a continuous Nakba since 1948,” Khoury says. “It’s still relevant.”
Motola displays that The Misplaced Work consists of two points: “one concrete, the other more symbolic.” The seek for Tomb’s misplaced work is essential by itself — the artist belongs within the bigger canon of Palestinian artwork and historical past. However the lack of the work made in Palestine, Motola explains, “is a symbol of a much wider loss and prompts the idea of a symbolic gesture to reimagine and reclaim with the means of artistic practices.” Within the spring of 2024, the UN expressed issues concerning the “scholasticide” in Gaza — the destruction of most, if not all, the area’s instructional and cultural establishments. The Misplaced Work presents a approach to revive work as soon as misplaced to cultural erasure, utilizing creativeness and reminiscence alone.
Raed Issa, “Diary of Displacement” (2025)
