John Jurayj

Private Collection, New York 

This work is in very good condition. The canvas is slightly slack. There are some small water marks to the bottom centre of the canvas, inherent to the artist's working process. The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, with the overall colours being sharper and more vibrant in the original work.
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John Jurayj is a Lebanese-American artist whose works are directly inspired by his war-torn homeland. Jurayj tackles a wide range of topics in his work, specifically the impact of his cultural heritage and turbulent political background upon his identity. He explores his experiences as an Arab-American artist, straddling vast cultural and continental divides. Notions of nationalism, exile, familial expectation, trauma and the fluidity of personal identity are fundamental to his practice. His art works are consequently a complex narrative of the interwoven relationship between the Arab world and the West.

The Cedar Series commenced in 2006, in which Jurayj re-appropriates 1960s family photos of the cedar trees of Lebanon from the years preceding his birth.  The paint and image hover ambiguously, suspended between recuperation and collapse. While Jurayj's work often contends with dislocation, rupture and trauma, the work from this series represents a rare locus that which lies just outside of lived experience, somewhere in a fictional past.