Artist: Dor Guez

Goodman Gallery presents Unfolding Negatives, a solo presentation by Jerusalem-born artist Dor Guez - his first in the gallery’s New York space. The exhibition marks a return to US audiences.

The exhibition continues Guez’s exploration of the overlooked histories of his family and related communities, while also reflecting his engagement with American photographers who were active in the Levant during the first half of the 20th century.

The artist’s multicultural and multi-religious heritage—having a Palestinian mother from Lydda and an Arab-Jewish father from Tunisia—are often fundamental to his approach to the concepts of home and exile, underscoring how minorities often possess deeper insights into majority perspectives. Guez’s work points to the complexities between first-hand accounts of the past and dominant narratives through diverse mediums. His practice draws on archival materials from both public and private sources, exploring ways in which stories are formed.

Unfolding Negatives examines the transformation of materials from two to three-dimensional forms, using found objects that are re-contextualised. Viewers are introduced to the show with a new work titled ‘There is a Tide in the Affairs of Men’ (2025). This image is based on a historical aerial photograph of the shores of Mandatory Palestine sourced from the American Colony Archive. The edge of the photographic negative was damaged by flooding at its storage location in Jerusalem, prior to the transfer of the American Colony photographers’ negatives for archival preservation at the Library of Congress in Washington in the 1970s. The scar left by the water on the original negative created a black stain at the edge of the printed photograph.

Unfolding Negatives also features one of Guez’s signature pieces, ‘Samira’ (2025)—a scanogram based on a photograph of his grandmother on her wedding day—the first in Palestinian society in Lydda after the 1948 war. Guez discovered the original photograph in a small shoebox hidden under his grandparents’ bed, where it was in a fragile state, with a portion torn away. As in many of his works, the themes of damage created by time are central, imbuing the piece with meaning derived from the missing part, as the bride’s veil transforms into the blank white gaps of the photographic paper. The loss of Guez’s family estate in Lydda in 1948 resonates with present events.

Guez’s exploration of larger themes including migratory identity, psycho-geographical markers and invisible histories continues in ‘Khubeiza’ (2024 - 2025) and ‘Suitcase #2 and #4’ (2024 - 2025), bodies of work that use plantlife and suitcases to consider stories of occupation, displacement and sustaining life despite scarcity.

Dor Guez Munayer’s (b. Jerusalem) practice comprises photography, video, installations, and sculpture. Through multimedia performances, Guez transforms art into a vehicle for storytelling. During a recent performance at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, he examined multi-colonial projections looking at different historical resources. His latest overview, “Catastrophe,” at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá in 2022, spanned a wide range of works that reflect the artist’s engagement with his communities and the ever-evolving studies of the Mediterranean Basin.

Guez’s work has been displayed in solo exhibitions at the Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City (2023); Felix Nussbaum Museum, Osnabrück (2023); MAMBO: Museum of Modern Art, Bogota (2022); Kunst im Kreuzgang, Bielefeld (2021); Futura Gallery, Prague, (2020); American Colony Archive, Jerusalem (2019); MAN Museum, Nuoro (2018); the Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem (2017); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2016); the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2015) the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Massachusetts (2013); The Mosaic Rooms, A.M Qattan Foundation, Centre for Contemporary Arab Culture & Art, London (2013) and the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2010).

Guez’s works are included in public collections such as Tate Modern London, Center Pompidou Paris, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, LACMA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Princeton University Art Museum, The Jewish Museum New York, Rose Art Museum, FRAC collection Marseille, Museum of Modern Art Bogota, and more.

Dor Guez Munayer lives and works between Jaffa and Athens.