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The Lost Paintings: a Prelude to Return

Friday, August 29, 2025 5:00 p.m.
Saturday, October 4, 2025 6:00 p.m.

articule 6285 Rue Saint-Hubert Montréal, QC, H2S 2M2 Canada (map)

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MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) x articule

© Credits: *Tree of Patience*, Ola Alkrenawi, still image, 2024.

The Lost Paintings: a Prelude to Return

This travelling exhibition extends across two venues – MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) and articule.
Exhibition at articule from August 29 to October 4, 2025
Opening reception at articule on Friday, August 29th, from 5 to 7 PM
For more information on the events in collaboration with MAI, please consult the calendar below.

The Lost Paintings exhibition is curated by Joëlle Tomb, Haidi Motola, and Rula Khoury.

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, multi-media, 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.

From Haifa to Gaza, landscapes are revisited not as backgrounds, but as living witnesses; still life is rendered unstable, objects and places teetering between presence and disappearance. Archival fragments reemerge as portals, where loss is neither resolved nor concealed but held, examined, and reimagined. Rather than reconstruct the past, the exhibition inhabits the void—where what is absent does not vanish, but stands determined. In this space, memory becomes an act of return, not to what was, but to what still calls.

Artists — Noor Abed · Abed Abdi · Hala Abo Freh · Ghassan Yousef Abulaban · Tala Abunuwar · Ruba Al-Faraouna · Dalia Ali · Faten Abu Ali · Ola Alkrenawi · Sama Alshaibi · Aysha E Arar · Doaa Badran · Nasrin Abu Baker · Joanna Bararkat · Jacqueline Béjani · Doris Bittar · Benji Boyadgian · Muhammad Nour Elkhairy · Faissal El-Malak · Ashraf Fawakhry · Michael Halak · Aya Abu Hawash · Raed Issa · Iman Jabrah · Khaled Jarrar · Juhaina Habibi Kandalaft · Mado Kelleyan · Dina Nazmi Khorchid · Bayan Kiwan · Noel Maghathe · Yara Kassem Mahajena · Maria Saleh Mahameed · Souad Naser Makhoul · Sliman Mansour · Sara Mraish · Zohdy Qadry · Antoine Elias Raffoul · Ridikkuluz · Fatima Abu Roomi · Steve Sabella · Razan AlSalah · Nora Sayyad · Farid Abu Shakra · Samah Shihadi · Nardeen Srouji · Dalleh Tarabey · Fouad Tomb · Lorena Tomb · Sandra Tomb · Mary Tuma · Sharif Waked · Ronen Zien · Manar Zuabi

Calendar of Events

articule
6282 Saint-Hubert Street, Montreal, Quebec

Exhibition at articule from August 29 to October 4, 2025

Opening Reception at articule, with curators and artists present
articule — Friday, August 29, 2025, 5 - 7 pm
Guided tour of the exhibition with curator Joëlle Tomb
articule — Saturday, September 6th, 1 to 2 PM (English)
Doors open at noon
Echoing ‘The Lost Paintings’: a musical encounter
articule — Saturday, September 27, 2025, 3:30 to 4:30 PM
With multi-instrumentalist Radwan Ghazi Mouhmneh and Florence Blain Mbaye (english horn & voice)
Painting Workshop for Kids with Sandra Tomb
articule — Sunday, September 28th, 2 to 4 PM (English)
Doors open at noon

MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels)
3680, Jeanne-Mance Street, Montreal, Quebec

Exhibition at MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) from September 5 to October 4, 2025

Opening Reception at the MAI, with curators and artists present
MAI — Thursday, September 4, 2025, 5 - 7 PM
Conversation with the curators and artists of the exhibition, moderated by Farah Atoui
MAI’s Café-bar — Friday, September 5, 2025, 6 - 7:30 PM
Guided tour of the exhibition with curator Joëlle Tomb
MAI — Saturday, September 6, 2025, 3 to 4 PM (French)
Doors open at 2:30 PM

Organization

The Lost Paintings is a nonprofit organization established to advance the work on The Lost Paintings project. The organization is a collective of international curators and cultural producers committed to sharing the untold stories behind art from diverse cultures around the world. The mission of the organization is to bring forgotten and lesser-known works of art into public view through thoughtfully curated exhibitions, insightful artist talks, films and immersive educational tours. By connecting historical narratives with contemporary perspectives, The Lost Paintings seeks to inspire a deeper understanding and appreciation of art’s pivotal role in shaping cultures and histories globally. The Lost Paintings is a registered nonprofit organization based in the US.

Co-curators of The Lost Paintings

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, in recent years, with Bedouin women living in unrecognized villages in the Naqab.

Joëlle Tomb is an abstract painter, art advocate and curator based in Newton, MA. She was born in Lebanon and raised in Saudi Arabia and Canada, where she gained her Master’s in Education. Her grandfather, Maroun Tomb, was a prolific painter and her father Fouad Tomb is a modern Lebanese painter who dedicated his life to arts education. She served as a docent at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston for three years and facilitated various public art projects. She served on several board including the New Art Centre & Art Resource Collaborative for Kid. She also presides over the Fouad & May Tomb Foundation for the Arts, her family’s international art platform dedicated to preserving the family’s artistic heritage and to promoting art for humanity. Joëlle’s first solo exhibition took place in Newton City Hall (2019), and since then she has participated in several group shows locally and internationally. Her curatorial work includes, Mehswar “A Painter’s Return” (2022) at the Nearby Gallery in Newton, MA; Meshwar of an artist from Palestine to Lebanon: Dialogue between two generations Maroun & Fouad Tomb (2023) at Dar El Nimer for Arts & Culture in Beirut, Lebanon; and Aswat: Elevating Arab Women Voices (2023) at the New Art Center in Newton, MA.

Rula Khoury is an art curator, historian, and critic, currently based in Haifa. She holds a Master’s degree in Art History from the University of Haifa and a second Master’s in Writing Art Criticism from the School of Visual Arts, New York.

Khoury served as General Director of the Arab Culture Association in Haifa (2020) and, prior to that, as 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 Mapping Procession, a street-based happening in Ramallah. She was also one of the curators of the Autonomous Biennale (2023, 2025).

Her art criticism has been published in various international magazines, including AWARE, Tohu Magazine, and Tribe Photo Magazine. She has also published two children’s books, one of them in collaboration with the Barjeel Foundation. In addition, Khoury has taught in higher education institutions, offering courses on the history of Palestinian art and the fundamentals of art history.

Her latest project is the establishment of a new art gallery in Jaffa, Al-Mathaneh.

Acknowledgements

This travelling exhibition extends across two venues – Montréal, arts interculturels and articule. It was produced with the support of the Kone Foundation, the May & Fouad Tomb Foundation for the Arts, Canada Council for the Arts and Conseil des Arts et des Lettres de Québec.

MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels)

Founded in 1999, MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) is a non-profit organization that supports the development, creation, presentation and promotion of intercultural arts for a variety of audiences. MAI's programming promotes hybrid and innovative practices in dance, theatre, visual arts, speech arts, performance, music and arts, while building bridges between artists and local communities through its Public + program.

For any questions or requests concerning accessibility to the event or our gallery space, please contact James Goddard via email or by phone at 514-842-9686. For general accessibility information, please visit our dedicated page. We are committed to creating an inclusive and welcoming space for all.

Considering ongoing COVID-19 and flu transmissions, please note that mask wearing is strongly recommended during events.