Offsite Upcoming Exhibition & Pop-Ups
Raouf Rifai's 'The Disruptors'
The National University of Singapore Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (“NUS Medicine”) and Assaad W. Razzouk, NUS Medicine International Council member, will host an art exhibition at the East Garden Gallery of the Fullerton Hotel in Singapore from 9 to 29 September 2020 (inclusive), featuring Lebanese artist Raouf Rifai’s new series especially created for this event, “Disruptors.”
The exhibition is curated by Assaad W. Razzouk.
The net proceeds from the sale of the artworks will be donated to paediatric oncology at NUS Medicine.
In “The Disruptors,” Sana Gallery presents a limited collection of ten paintings by the doyen of Lebanese artists, Raouf Rifai. The featured “Disruptors” are Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jack Ma, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Pony Ma, Satoshi Nakamoto, Sergei Brin, and PM Lee Kwan Yew.
Each paintings is inspired by the “Darwich,” a recurrent presence in Rifai’s art. Rifai's dedication to the Darwich resembles that of Paul Klee and his angels. Like Klee's angels, Rifai's Darwiches are many and varied. They share some common characteristics, foremost the fact that they are all rooted in human existence: They have weaknesses and flaws, a myriad of expressions, attitudes and emotions; they are the simple common man and the Sufi mystic; they are secular and spiritual; they are brilliant and less so; they are simple yet at the time wiser than everyone around them; they are full of worries or playful; they cry yet derive humour from everyday tasks. In short, we recognize ourselves in them, they are us. “The Disruptors” paintings play on all these double meanings, adding humour, irony, exaggeration and ridicule, to paint a wide canvas of the world’s social and political conundrums.
“My art’s main subject is Humanity” says Rifai; It is nourished by the history of our civilization and our heritage.”
The exhibition space has been kindly donated in support of this charitable fund raising by the Fullerton Hotel.