Sabri Sundos Faces Catastrophe With Flowers
“I am obsessed with autonomy and movement,” the Palestinian-American artist tells Hyperallergic in an interview.
"It's the one thing in the world that is just there to make things beautiful," Palestinian-American artist Sabri Sundos says of flowers. The motif appears throughout Chasing Flowers, his solo exhibition at Fisk Gallery in Portland, Oregon, where dancing figures and floral forms become vehicles for exploring freedom, longing, and Palestinian diasporic identity.
Yet painting is a relatively recent chapter in Sundos's creative life. Before turning to visual art in 2018, the Brooklyn-based artist spent years making music, touring, and performing, only picking up a paintbrush while designing an album cover.
“The first time I painted, I remember how good it made me feel,” he recalls in an interview with Hyperallergic. Unlike in music, where collaboration often mediates the outcome, painting offered him a direct line between his thoughts and the final image.
In recent years, Sundos’s understanding of what art is and can do has continued to evolve. In 2024, he and his artist collective, Unibrow Sun, designed the “Somebody I Love is Palestinian” t-shirt as part of a fundraising campaign for Gaza Mutual Aid Solidarity, helping raise money for displaced families in Gaza. The phrase emerged from a simple conviction: If someone you love is Palestinian, how can you remain silent? By grounding the message in love, Sundos hoped to expose the absurdity of the hostility it provoked, while also demonstrating how even a small act of design could build solidarity, foster community, and translate empathy into tangible support.
