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Join curators, Joëlle Tomb, Rula Khoury, Haidi Motola for an informal tour of the exhibition The Lost Paintings – A Prelude to Return with exhibiting artists present.
This exhibition gathers 53 artists from Palestine and its diaspora across time and borders to reimagine the missing works of Maroun Tomb, a Palestinian Lebanese artist, whose 1947 exhibition in Haifa was lost amid the mass displacement and dispossession of the Palestinians during the Nakba. The works resurrect a moment that was nearly erased until it was discovered in archival documents.
Drawing from the minimal information of Tomb's last exhibition in Palestine before his forced exile, the contemporary artists' responses navigate across painting, photography, multimedia, sculpture and video to move between what was and what could be. They do not reconstruct the past, but reclaim it-through fragments, gestures, and stories passed across generations. Bringing together today's rising artists alongside the trailblazers of Palestinian modern art, this exhibition is a collective act of resistance paired with interrogation of colonial violence and its consequences on multiple generations.
Photo Credit: David Wong
Dates & Times
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| Fri 23 Jan 2026 | 2:00pm | £0.00 | Book Now |
Meet the Curators
Joëlle Tomb
Joëlle Tomb is an abstract painter, art advocate, and curator based in Newton, Massachusetts. Born in Lebanon and raised in Saudi Arabia and Canada, she earned her Master’s degree in Education before turning her focus to the arts.
Art runs deep in her family: her grandfather, Maroun Tomb, was a Lebanese-Palestinian painter, and her father, Fouad Tomb, is a modern Lebanese artist who dedicated his life to arts education. Joëlle’s own practice and curatorial work continue this multigenerational legacy.
Rula Khoury
Rula Khoury is an art curator, historian and art critic, currently based in Haifa. Khoury earned her Master’s degree in Art History from Haifa University (2011) and an additional Master in Writing Art Criticism from the School of Visual Arts, New York (2017). Khoury served as the General Director of the Arab Culture Association in Haifa (2020 ) and before that was the artistic director of the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah (2014). In 2014, as part of the Qalandiya International Biennale, she curated the Manam exhibition in Haifa, and the Mapping Procession, a happening event in the streets of Ramallah. Her art critique was published in various art magazines, such as Tohu Magazine, Arab 48, and Tribe Photo Magazine. Since 2010, Khoury has been an instructor and advisor in higher education institutions and taught at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, the International Academy of Art in Ramallah and the Oranim College near Haifa
Haidi Motola
Haidi Motola is a visual artist and a doctoral student at the Academy of Fine Arts of Uniarts Helsinki. Her research focuses on archives, memory and political imagination in the colonial context. Since 2016, she has been a member of Activestills, a collective of documentary photographers, whose work focuses on decolonial struggles in Palestine. Over the years, she has been involved in various art and activist initiatives, including, recently, with Bedouin women living in unrecognized villages in the Naqab.
