Jaffa Exhibition Brings the Legacy of the Nabi Rubin Festival Back to Life
- Caroline Haïat
- Jun 9
- 1 min read
A forgotten collective memory is coming back to life in Tel Aviv. The Al-Mathana Gallery is hosting "Rubin Nostalgia", a contemporary art exhibition inspired by the famous Nabi Rubin festival, which shaped the social and cultural life of the region for centuries.
Held at the Al-Mathana cultural space, located at 25 Salame Street in Tel Aviv and developed by the Reality and Yitzhaki groups, the exhibition offers a journey through memory, identity, and contemporary artistic expression through the works of several Palestinian and Arab-Israeli artists.
For hundreds of years, the Nabi Rubin festival was one of the region’s most significant popular gatherings. Every summer, south of Jaffa, thousands of families would come together in a vast temporary tent city, transforming the coastline into a vibrant space of celebration, social interaction, commerce, and freedom.
Rather than presenting the festival as a simple historical memory, the exhibition seeks to revive its spirit and symbolic significance. Through paintings, sculptures, installations, and multimedia works, the participating artists explore the power of memory to recreate spaces of joy, community, and presence within a contemporary context.
According to the organizers, Rubin Nostalgia is not solely about the past. The exhibition invites visitors to reflect on how collective traditions continue to shape contemporary identities and how art can revive lost experiences while giving them new meaning.
The exhibition is curated by Roula Khoury, with assistance from Ahmad Haliwa and Masa Amar. It features works by Ahmad Asaad, Sami Bukhari, Ahmad Barhoum, Nour Jabarin, Miflah Darwish, Ghaïd Al-Khatib, and Aya Fakher.
Caroline Haïat
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