Sabri Sundos on Flowers, Diaspora, and Hope at Fisk Gallery

Palestinian-American artist Sabri Sundos presents 'Chasing Flowers,' a solo exhibition at Fisk Gallery in Portland, Oregon, featuring paintings, tatreez-inspired embroidery, drawings, and animations. The show explores freedom, longing, and Palestinian diasporic identity through recurring motifs of dancing figures and floral forms. Sundos, who began painting in 2018 after a career in music, works in two distinct bodies: intuitive oil paintings and meticulously planned embroidery rooted in Palestinian tradition. A dancing figure derived from continuous-line drawings of Alvin Ailey dancers recurs throughout, embodying autonomy and movement. In 2024, Sundos and his collective Unibrow Sun designed the 'Somebody I Love is Palestinian' t-shirt to raise funds for Gaza Mutual Aid Solidarity. The exhibition includes animations with piano music composed by Sundos, connecting his visual practice to his musical background. Sundos hopes viewers recognize themselves in the work, offering younger generations a broader sense of possibility where cultural inheritance and individuality coexist.