Zoo Garden - Cairo

Acrylic on canvas, 60 cm x 90 cm (23 in x 35 in), 2025

When Barakat spotted Zoo Garden—Cairo among the titles of Maroun Tomb’s lost works, she was reminded of her favorite photograph of her father, Fayez Barakat. The black-and-white photo was taken in 1964 when he was a young teenager visiting the Cairo Zoo. It had been his first trip out of Palestine and marked the beginning of his lifelong path as an antiquities and art dealer. 

The image, though seemingly ordinary, carries immense weight. Her father’s youthful gaze meets the camera, as if looking toward the future. The towering elephant becomes a symbol in the work representing the scale of memory and stories carried by the older generations of Palestinians, and of the tension between what is remembered, what is shared and what is lost. 

Though photographs capture fragments of time, they hint at irretrievable moments that ache of distance, the fragility of cultural inheritance, and the intimate stories passed down between generations. This painting invokes Barakat’s father’s personal history and engages with the memory, identity, and the losses that live between images and words.

Joanna Barakat expresses her deep-rooted connection to Palestinian culture through her mixed-media artwork, which combines painting and Palestinian embroidery. Through her self-reflective work, she advocates for Palestine, challenges collective perceptions and explores transcendental ideas. Based in Abu Dhabi, Barakat was born in Jerusalem, raised in Los Angeles and then moved to London for university. She received her BA from Central Saint Martins and her MA from School of Oriental and Arab Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK. She is the author of Narrative Threads: Palestinian Embroidery in Contemporary Art (2025).