RAOUF RIFAÏ: The carnival of Darwishs

RAOUF RIFAÏ

Raouf Rifaï (b. 1954) is one of the most significant figurative/abstract painters in the Middle East today. Over the course of more than forty years, he has produced a vibrant, compelling and expressive body of work in a range of media that is widely collected and internationally exhibited. His familiar signature style features strong colours and shapes, and expressionistic human figures and faces, with semantic elements leaving it to the viewer to decipher and connect to retrieve their underlying consistency.

Rifaï’s work critiques dogmas, challenging both capitalist and religious injunctions. His paintings express the absence of universal truth, disrupting the other’s claims to order. By suspending desire’s alienation, he redirects satisfaction cycles into his art. Beyond irony, Rifaï’s work embodies psychoanalytic acts, breaking norms and challenging established knowledge. This study offers a brief glimpse into his alternative pictorial scene, revealing how he subverts conventional discourses and asserts individual responsibility.