RIP Sliman Mansour
Sliman Mansour, Sad Tunes, Oil on canvas, 1977, via Barjeel Art Foundation
RIP Sliman Mansour ( July 1947 – 24 August 2026)
The image of the above painting may have been the first time I saw a work by Sliman Mansour. It was at an exhibition titled Sky Over The East in 2014 in Abu Dhabi curated by Suheyla Takesh. It was also the cover of the exhibition catalogue. I shared works from the exhibition on this blog, and listed the exhibition as one of my favourites in 2014.
Since then I’ve seen a few of his works elsewhere.
Images via Zawyeh Gallery and Barjeel Art Foundation
Matahef magazine featured Sliman Mansour in their April 2026 edition, you can read it here.
An extract:
In the absence of museums, archives, and cultural ministries — the infrastructure that most societies use to house and transmit heritage — Palestinian artists took on a role that extended far beyond the canvas. They became, by necessity, the primary custodians of cultural memory.
Mansour is candid about whether this felt like a deliberate responsibility. “I don’t know if we consciously saw ourselves as custodians,” he says. “But we felt compelled to engage with this heritage — to nurture it and preserve it.”
From an interview with Hyperallergic in 2023:
“Anything that is Palestinian, even just being here, breathing and thinking, is a sensitive matter to the Israelis because they built their narrative around denying our existence. Our work not only as painters but as intellectuals — in culture, in everything — is to express that we are here.”