Marwan Sahmarani, a Lebanese painter born in Beirut in 1970, lives and works between his native city and the mountain village of Tárbena in Spain. Educated within the post-war Lebanese artistic milieu, his work explores the intersections between history, emotion and corporeality. Drawing on expressionist traditions, Sahmarani employs vigorous brushwork and dense impasto to construct compositions where colour and gesture convey psychological and political tension. His paintings frequently address the cyclical nature of violence and the human propensity for destruction, transforming these themes into visual meditations on vulnerability and collective memory.

In The Exiled, Sahmarani challenges viewers to engage in a profound confrontation with their own egos, revealing how perception of the outer world is inseparable from the inner self. The work lays bare the concealed and uncomfortable realities that bind humanity together, exposing a shared consciousness where the conscious and the subconscious overlap. The surface is rich with flesh, depicting the tearing and wearing of human skin as a visceral metaphor for existence and fragility. Vivid colours pulse across the composition, embodying the ecstasy of life amidst the inevitability of death. This interplay of hues, particularly the varied tones of skin, becomes a powerful reflection of lived reality, evoking both the beauty and the transience of the human condition.