Akram Zaatari is presenting sixteen paintings derived from his study of male wrestling, depicting contenders with exposed torsos on finely gridded graph paper suggestive of coordinates and scaling. The series Olive Green (2020) portrays scenes of oil wrestling, an ancient sport still practised today in Türkiye, Iran and the Balkans, where opponents aim to overpower each other through a sequence of controlled positions and holds, balancing force and technique through entanglement and physical tension. With this series, the artist lends intimacy to a mode of bodily collision and performative struggle. Crimson Red (2021), on the other hand, captures Russian athletes standing on scales to determine their competition weight category.
Here, Zaatari is interested in the semiotics of touch evident in performances of masculinity and rituals of homosocial culture, as well as in the dynamic between confinement and intimacy that they evince. Painted while the artist was quarantining in Beirut during the COVID-19 pandemic, both series betray a palpable seclusion that stands in contrast to wrestling’s traditional staging in crowded public arenas.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Akram Zaatari (b. 1966, Saida) has produced over fifty films and videos, numerous books, and large installations of photographic material. His work is focused on forgotten histories, the circulation of images in wartime, and the shifting tenses of lost or delayed letters. Excavation, in its literal and metaphorical senses, shapes his search for objects, narratives and missing links, aiming to restore connections broken or lost over time. A co-founder of the Arab Image Foundation – an artist-led research institute dedicated to preserving photography in the Arab world – he has played a key role in developing the discourse on preservation and in shaping Beirut’s critical contemporary art scene. Zaatari has participated in international exhibitions including the 16th Sharjah Biennial (2025); the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel (2012).
EXHIBITED WORKS
Akram Zaatari (b. 1966)
Olive Green, 2020
Acrylic paint on A4 paper
Courtesy of the artist, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, and Thomas Dane Gallery
Akram Zaatari (b. 1966)
Crimson Red, 2021
Acrylic paint on A3 and A4 paper
Courtesy of the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery
