New York-based Palestinian American artist Sabri Sundos is presenting Chasing Flowers, a new solo exhibition at Fisk Gallery in Portland, Oregon.
The exhibition examines the tension between escape and engagement through recurring floral imagery. For Sundos, flowers become symbols of beauty, refuge, and resilience, offering moments of pause within a world shaped by constant demands, noise, and political uncertainty.
Rather than functioning solely as decoration, the flowers create temporary spaces for reflection. Their familiarity offers a sense of calm, while the realities surrounding them continually draw the viewer back to the wider pressures of everyday life.
Flowers as Refuge and Acts of Attention
At the centre of Chasing Flowers is a push-and-pull between retreat and awareness. Sundos presents beauty as both a sanctuary and a quiet form of attention, asking how one can disengage from difficult realities without losing sight of the forces that shape them.
Consequently, the exhibition treats floral imagery as more than an aesthetic motif. The flowers become a way to consider resilience, presence, and the possibility of finding moments of stillness amid uncertainty.
Sundos’ practice extends this exploration through painting and textiles. Raised in the Palestinian diaspora, the artist examines heritage, memory, labour, and time while bringing traditional craft techniques into dialogue with cultural iconography.
Sabri Sundos Connects Craft With Cultural Memory
The tactile qualities of Sundos’ work place emphasis on the human process of making. By drawing attention to inherited techniques and familiar symbols, the artist considers how creative practice can preserve cultural memory while creating space for evolving conversations around identity and belonging.
Furthermore, this relationship between tradition and contemporary practice gives the work a strong sense of agency. Craft becomes not simply a link to the past but an active way to carry heritage forward.
Ultimately, Chasing Flowers positions art as a means of sustaining and reclaiming cultural memory. Within that framework, Sundos’ floral imagery carries an enduring sense of hope, balancing refuge with engagement and beauty with resilience.
Chasing Flowers is open to the public through September 5 at Fisk Gallery, located inside Wieden+Kennedy at 224 NW 13th Ave, Portland, Oregon.