Aysha E Arar, « Shahrazad / شهرزاد »

The Arabian Nights, The Story of Scheherazade

“Then listen,” said Scheherazade. “I am determined to stop this barbarous practice of the Sultan’s, and to deliver the girls and mothers from the awful fate that hangs over them.”
“It would be an excellent thing to do,” returned the grand-vizir, “but how do you propose to accomplish it?”
“My father,” answered Scheherazade, “it is you who have to provide the Sultan daily with a fresh wife, and I implore you, by all the affection you bear me, to allow the honour to fall upon me.”
“Have you lost your senses?” cried the grand-vizir, starting back in horror. “What has put such a thing into your head? You ought to know by this time what it means to be the sultan’s bride!”
“Yes, my father, I know it well,” replied she, “and I am not afraid to think of it. If I fail, my death will be a glorious one, and if I succeed I shall have done a great service to my country.”

The Arabian Nights Entertainments, edited by Andrew Lang, Longmans, Green and Co., 1898

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Sans titre is pleased to present Shahrazad / شهرزاد, the second solo exhibition by Palestinian artist Aysha E Arar (b. 1993) at the gallery.

Taking its title from the legendary storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights, the exhibition draws on the figure of Shahrazad, who escapes death by telling a new story each night. For Aysha E Arar, storytelling becomes an act of survival, a means of resisting violence and reclaiming one’s destiny.

Drawing from Palestinian folklore, mythology, poetry, and personal memories, the artist creates a universe inhabited by hybrid figures, suspended between the human, the animal, and the imaginary. Women, birds, horses, and fantastical creatures intertwine and transform, escaping fixed identities and conventional boundaries. As Anissa Touati and Mohamed Amer Meziane suggest in their essay on the artist, to be published in her forthcoming monograph by Mousse, her practice can be understood as an “amphibian art,” moving between worlds and embracing metamorphosis as a condition of freedom.

This fluidity unfolds across the monumental, unstretched fabrics presented in the exhibition. Bodies overlap and dissolve into one another, while flashes of red, yellow, and green emerge from predominantly charcoal-grey surfaces. Eyes, hands, and flowing hair become fragments of a visual language in which love, desire, fear, and violence coexist.

Handwritten Arabic words and phrases run through these compositions, becoming an integral part of the images. Among them, شهرزاد (Shahrazad), الحب (love), and الحرب (war) echo the intertwined narratives of the works. Elsewhere, the storyteller declares: “My homeland is the land of freedom, the land of love and war.” These inscriptions extend the gestures and movements of the figures, blurring the distinction between image and language.

Rooted in the Palestinian experience, E Arar’s practice embraces painting, drawing, poetry, and performance as interconnected forms of expression. Her fantastical world is not an escape from reality, but a way of reimagining it, preserving threatened memories while envisioning other possibilities.
Like Shahrazad, who survives by inventing a new story each night, Aysha E Arar transforms storytelling into a space of resistance, where tenderness, imagination, and desire become powerful assertions of life and freedom.

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Aysha E Arar is a Palestinian artist born in 1993. She received her BFA with honors from the HaMidrasha Faculty of Arts - Beit Berl College in 2018.

Previous solo exhibitions include Centre d’art contemporain de la Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel (2026); CC Strombeek, Grimbergen (2025); Château de Rochechouart – Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne (2025); Sans titre, Paris (2024), Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv, Paris & Brussels (2024 & 2023), ThisWeekendRoom, Seoul (2024), Beit HaGefen, Haifa (2023), Hayarkon 19, Tel Aviv (2022), and Givat Haviva Art Gallery (2021).

In the coming months, the artist will participate in group exhibitions at MO.CO., Montpellier; Frac-Artothèque Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Limoges and Galerias Municipais de Arte, Lisbon.
Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at Fondazione Made in Cloister, Naples (2026); Palais des Beaux-Arts, Paris (2025); Kunsthaus Baselland, Münchenstein (2024); MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier (2024); Cooper Cole, Toronto (2024); Sans titre, Paris (2024, 2022 & 2021); TAGELDIMDE / MIDDELGATE, Geel (2023); Edmond de Rothschild Center, Tel Aviv (2022); Umm al-Fahm Gallery (2022); Alfred Institute for Art and Culture, Tel Aviv (2021); Kultur Forum Dresden e.V., Dresden (2021); Albertinum Museum, Dresden (2021); Artura Gallery, Kfar Monash (2021); Balkont Gallery, Tel Aviv (2019); Ethiopian Embassy, Tel Aviv (2017); Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv (2017); Tel Aviv Cinematheque, Tel Aviv (2016); Excellence Project of the Jewish Festival, Krakow (2016).

Aysha E Arar’s works are featured in the collections of significant institutions and museums, including Lafayette Anticipations – Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin (Paris, France); SMAK – Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (Ghent, Belgium); Frac-Artothèque Nouvelle-Aquitaine (Limoges, France); Frac Corsica (Corte, Corsica) and Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne – Château de Rochechouart (Rochechouart, France).