Jerusalem in Exile: Artist’s Books by Kamal Boullata

This talk coincides with the opening of an exhibition celebrating the life and work of the Jerusalem-born artist Kamal Boullata (1942—2019). It focuses on Boullata’s handmade artist’s books and silk screen prints, which explore the interplay between poetry and image, and convergences of colour and architecture. At the centre of the exhibition is The Granada Portfolio, a collaboration between Boullata and the Syrian poet Adonis, prompted by their response to Granada’s architectural monument, the Alhambra. 

© Kamal Boullata / Courtesy of the artist

Claudia Tobin is curator of the exhibition with the artist’s wife Lily Farhoud. It opens at West Court Gallery, Jesus College, Cambridge on 24 January and runs until 13 March. The exhibition will travel to Beirut during 2020.

Claudia is a writer, curator and academic specialising in modern and contemporary art and literature. She is a Senior Research Associate at the Intellectual Forum, Jesus College Cambridge, and a Visiting Fellow at UCL's Institute for Advanced Studies. Her first book Still Life and Modernism: Artists, Writers, Dancers will be published in March and she is co-editor with Julian Bell and Julia Balchin of Ways of Drawing: Artists' Perspectives and Practices (2019). She is currently writing a book about colour and the imagination.