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Lot Essay
Suspended between departure and arrival, Untitled (Bab Al Hawa – Gate of the Wind series) captures a moment of transit that feels at once deeply personal and profoundly universal. A truck occupies almost the entire picture plane, advancing away from the viewer towards the horizon. Seen directly from behind, it appears less as a vehicle than as a vessel carrying lives in motion. Open to the sky and densely packed with passengers, blankets, bundles and belongings, it becomes a repository of memory itself, transporting fragments of home across an uncertain landscape. There is no indication of where these travellers have come from or where they are headed. Instead, Albraehe focuses on the space in between, that liminal moment in which the familiar has been left behind and the future remains unresolved.
The painting's visual density mirrors this condition. Figures, fabrics, possessions, road and sky dissolve into one another through a richly textured surface of colour. Brilliant reds, yellows, blues, greens and violets animate the composition, transforming clothing, blankets and luggage into an almost kaleidoscopic arrangement of forms. Against this chromatic vitality, the dark interior of the truck emerges as a shadowed counterpoint, suggesting both shelter and uncertainty. The closer one looks, the more distinctions begin to collapse. Bodies merge into blankets, blankets into landscape and landscape into atmosphere, as though movement itself has dissolved the boundaries between people and place.
Painted in 2020, the work belongs to Albraehe's Bab Al Hawa (Gate of the Wind) series, named after the border crossing between Syria and Turkey that became a major passage for displaced families during the Syrian conflict. Yet the series is neither documentary nor overtly political. Rather than depicting war directly, Albraehe turns his attention to its human consequences: the journeys undertaken, the lives carried from one place to another and the fragile realities suspended between loss and hope. The imagery emerged from scenes that remained with the artist during his years moving between Syria and Lebanon, where trucks laden with families and possessions became recurring symbols of lives in transition. Entire worlds seemed condensed into these temporary structures, carrying not only people but memories, histories, and aspirations toward an unknown future.
The series occupies a pivotal place within Albraehe's artistic development. Following his move to Beirut, the artist began painting the labourers and migrant workers with whom he lived, observing them return home exhausted and fall asleep after long days of work. These works, later developed into his celebrated Dream Catcher series, explored sleep as a state in which social distinctions dissolve, reducing all individuals to a shared condition of vulnerability. Subsequent encounters with women working agricultural land in Syria and Lebanon inspired Mother Earth, a body of work dedicated to the resilience of those sustaining families and communities amidst conflict and absence. Bab Al Hawa grows naturally from these earlier investigations, shifting attention from labour and endurance to the journeys connecting those who remain with those compelled to leave.
Human relationships remain central to the present composition. While the passengers initially appear as a collective mass, individual presences gradually emerge. Near the centre, a woman meets the viewer's gaze directly, forming a quiet yet compelling focal point amid the densely packed bodies and possessions. Around her, male figures turn away or retreat into themselves, while another appears to sleep. The arrangement recalls observations Albraehe has made about journeys he witnessed, where women often remained watchful while men, exhausted by travel and labour, surrendered themselves to rest. Here, vigilance and vulnerability coexist, lending the composition an understated psychological depth. Small details further enrich the work's symbolic language. The motif of the ʿayn, or evil eye, appears among the figures and their belongings, functioning as a protective emblem carried into an uncertain future.
Equally evocative is the phrase painted across the rear of the truck: Ya Rayeh, Kattir Malayeh, an Arabic saying traditionally spoken to someone departing, encouraging them to leave behind goodness and be remembered well. Within the context of the painting, the phrase acquires a particular poignancy. Set against a vehicle carrying families, belongings and memories towards an uncertain destination, the saying becomes both a farewell and a blessing, speaking to the hope that something of home, identity and human connection might endure despite the ruptures of displacement.
Seen within the broader trajectory of Albraehe's oeuvre, Untitled (Bab Al Hawa – Gate of the Wind series) marks a significant transition. It brings together many of the concerns that define his practice: migration, labour, memory, human resilience and the search for belonging. At the same time, the dissolution of figures into colour and atmosphere anticipates later works in which the boundaries between body, landscape and nature become increasingly fluid. Through its luminous palette, layered symbolism and profound empathy, the painting transforms a single journey into a meditation on one of the defining human experiences of our time.
Born in Suwayda, Syria, in 1991, Anas Albraehe is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, performance, and theatre. He studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus, graduating in 2014, before continuing his education in Lebanon with a Master's degree in Psychology and Art Therapy at the Lebanese University. Shaped by experiences of displacement and migration, his work explores themes of intimacy, vulnerability, memory and human connection. Today, living and working between Paris and Beirut, he is recognised for a deeply empathetic visual language that transforms personal and collective experiences into works of remarkable psychological and emotional resonance.
Albraehe’s work has been exhibited across the Arab world and internationally in solo and group exhibitions, including at the Middle East Institute Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Agial Art Gallery, Beirut; Artspace, Beirut; Wadi Finan Art Gallery, Amman and Albareh Art Gallery, Bahrain. In 2016–17, he participated in SAFIR TA’AROF, an artist workshop held as part of the Sharjah Biennial.
The painting's visual density mirrors this condition. Figures, fabrics, possessions, road and sky dissolve into one another through a richly textured surface of colour. Brilliant reds, yellows, blues, greens and violets animate the composition, transforming clothing, blankets and luggage into an almost kaleidoscopic arrangement of forms. Against this chromatic vitality, the dark interior of the truck emerges as a shadowed counterpoint, suggesting both shelter and uncertainty. The closer one looks, the more distinctions begin to collapse. Bodies merge into blankets, blankets into landscape and landscape into atmosphere, as though movement itself has dissolved the boundaries between people and place.
Painted in 2020, the work belongs to Albraehe's Bab Al Hawa (Gate of the Wind) series, named after the border crossing between Syria and Turkey that became a major passage for displaced families during the Syrian conflict. Yet the series is neither documentary nor overtly political. Rather than depicting war directly, Albraehe turns his attention to its human consequences: the journeys undertaken, the lives carried from one place to another and the fragile realities suspended between loss and hope. The imagery emerged from scenes that remained with the artist during his years moving between Syria and Lebanon, where trucks laden with families and possessions became recurring symbols of lives in transition. Entire worlds seemed condensed into these temporary structures, carrying not only people but memories, histories, and aspirations toward an unknown future.
The series occupies a pivotal place within Albraehe's artistic development. Following his move to Beirut, the artist began painting the labourers and migrant workers with whom he lived, observing them return home exhausted and fall asleep after long days of work. These works, later developed into his celebrated Dream Catcher series, explored sleep as a state in which social distinctions dissolve, reducing all individuals to a shared condition of vulnerability. Subsequent encounters with women working agricultural land in Syria and Lebanon inspired Mother Earth, a body of work dedicated to the resilience of those sustaining families and communities amidst conflict and absence. Bab Al Hawa grows naturally from these earlier investigations, shifting attention from labour and endurance to the journeys connecting those who remain with those compelled to leave.
Human relationships remain central to the present composition. While the passengers initially appear as a collective mass, individual presences gradually emerge. Near the centre, a woman meets the viewer's gaze directly, forming a quiet yet compelling focal point amid the densely packed bodies and possessions. Around her, male figures turn away or retreat into themselves, while another appears to sleep. The arrangement recalls observations Albraehe has made about journeys he witnessed, where women often remained watchful while men, exhausted by travel and labour, surrendered themselves to rest. Here, vigilance and vulnerability coexist, lending the composition an understated psychological depth. Small details further enrich the work's symbolic language. The motif of the ʿayn, or evil eye, appears among the figures and their belongings, functioning as a protective emblem carried into an uncertain future.
Equally evocative is the phrase painted across the rear of the truck: Ya Rayeh, Kattir Malayeh, an Arabic saying traditionally spoken to someone departing, encouraging them to leave behind goodness and be remembered well. Within the context of the painting, the phrase acquires a particular poignancy. Set against a vehicle carrying families, belongings and memories towards an uncertain destination, the saying becomes both a farewell and a blessing, speaking to the hope that something of home, identity and human connection might endure despite the ruptures of displacement.
Seen within the broader trajectory of Albraehe's oeuvre, Untitled (Bab Al Hawa – Gate of the Wind series) marks a significant transition. It brings together many of the concerns that define his practice: migration, labour, memory, human resilience and the search for belonging. At the same time, the dissolution of figures into colour and atmosphere anticipates later works in which the boundaries between body, landscape and nature become increasingly fluid. Through its luminous palette, layered symbolism and profound empathy, the painting transforms a single journey into a meditation on one of the defining human experiences of our time.
Born in Suwayda, Syria, in 1991, Anas Albraehe is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, performance, and theatre. He studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus, graduating in 2014, before continuing his education in Lebanon with a Master's degree in Psychology and Art Therapy at the Lebanese University. Shaped by experiences of displacement and migration, his work explores themes of intimacy, vulnerability, memory and human connection. Today, living and working between Paris and Beirut, he is recognised for a deeply empathetic visual language that transforms personal and collective experiences into works of remarkable psychological and emotional resonance.
Albraehe’s work has been exhibited across the Arab world and internationally in solo and group exhibitions, including at the Middle East Institute Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Agial Art Gallery, Beirut; Artspace, Beirut; Wadi Finan Art Gallery, Amman and Albareh Art Gallery, Bahrain. In 2016–17, he participated in SAFIR TA’AROF, an artist workshop held as part of the Sharjah Biennial.