DUBAI.- Zawyeh Gallery has announced their opening of Dia Mrad’s solo exhibition Utilities at Alserkal Avenue from January 11 until February 22, 2023. The show can also be attended virtually.

Lebanon is now the site of one of the world’s worst economic crises since the 1850s. Through an ethnographic lens, Utilities seeks to explore Beirut’s economic collapse by excavating and documenting the multilayers of the crisis’s material manifestations across the city’s urban fabric. The work focuses on the infrastructural dimensions that were most affected, namely the electricity grids, water supplies, and the banking sector.

Mrad's work reflects how Beirut’s infrastructure has changed as a product of the crisis: residents turning to solar power as an alternative to the city’s energy grid; private water companies thriving as households and businesses run dry of water; and banks, where depositors’ savings are withheld and their value evaporating, becoming heavily securitized and militarized sites of hostility.

Already immersed in Beirut’s social and urban landscape as an inhabitant and artist, Mrad’s work can be classified as an ‘ethnography at home’ that pushes us to think through objects. The artist’s practice focuses on the material urban landscape as a site of socio-political and economic phenomena.

Dia Mrad is a Lebanese visual artist working in the field of photography. Through his work, he captures the shifting urban environment from aesthetic, social-economic, and cultural perspectives. Focusing largely on Beirut, the artist portrays buildings as silent witnesses, alluding to the themes of identity and transience.

Zawyeh Gallery is an independent Visual Art Gallery founded by Ziad Anani in Ramallah, Palestine, in 2013. Since March 2020, the gallery has expanded by opening in a second location at Alserkal Avenue in Dubai, UAE.

Zawyeh’s mission is to promote emerging and established Palestinian artists – from Palestine and the Diaspora – through various thematic exhibitions at home and abroad. In the past few years, the gallery organized several solo and collective exhibitions, showcasing artworks based on a variety of mediums, including painting, sculpture, installation, video, and photography.

Zawyeh aims to support young artists and showcase contemporary and modern Palestinian art internationally through participation in art fairs, exhibitions, and specific art projects. Zawyeh Gallery has participated in a number of art fairs, including Paris Contemporary Art Show P/CAS (2019), Contemporary Istanbul (2019), Galleries at MAS Abu Dhabi (2019), Art Dubai (2022, 2021, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016), Abu Dhabi Art (2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018), and Beirut Art Fair (2018, 2017).

Zawyeh believes in investing in creativity and artistic talents in Palestine as a way of resilience in the face of adversaries.