Talal and Ziad Al Najjar

Our studio visit with brothers Talal and Ziad Al Najjar revealed two distinct practices brought together by a shared instinct to make the familiar strange. Stepping inside their world one encounters a theatrical assortment of curious objects, images and materials, poised somewhere between artefact, prop and unresolved clue. Talal’s interdisciplinary practice draws directly upon absurdity, researching, archiving and distorting material culture until ordinary things acquire an uncanny, satirical charge. Ziad approaches transformation through painting, allowing bodily sensation, natural forms and symbolic fragments to spread, erode and recombine across the canvas.