As Yet Untitled -Ahmed Muhanna 14
1984 - Present
Description
Paint on a creased cardboard aid box. A blue printed label at the left carries the World Food Programme wheat-and-laurel emblem, with further printed Arabic at the right and the words "Food Parcel Box" faintly legible against the yellow ground.
A large yellow circular form dominates the upper half of the composition. Five figures are grouped below it. An adult woman stands at the center rear in a black head covering, facing forward. Four children are arranged in front of her, all facing forward, in dark clothing with yellow and ochre accents. All five are rendered with simplified facial features.
Arabic script in yellow overlays the figures; the text is not legible at the available resolution. A stylized plant or wheat motif sits at lower left in brown and burgundy. The palette runs to yellow, black, dark brown, ochre, burgundy, white, blue, and grey. Brushwork is gestural and loose, with visible paint drips and irregular edges toward the lower portion.
Signed lower left and dated 2025.
Record status: the artist has not supplied a title, dimensions, or a statement about this work, and the medium is recorded in his own terms. Everything described above is observable in the archived image and has not been verified against the physical work. The photograph shows creasing throughout the cardboard, paint drips, staining, and general weathering. The concept and story portion of this field is left empty pending the artist's own words.
Artist Notes
No artist notes supplied for this work. As recorded on the parent record for this intake (97a6e785-84f8-456c-a923-12d030f3f46d), the artist had declined to add his own commentary at the time of intake. Status carried across the series and recorded 2026-09-17. Anything entered in this field must be Ahmed Muhanna's own words, quoted or summarized from a source he supplied. Do not paraphrase on his behalf.
Preservation Notes
Record provenance: separated from art record 97a6e785-84f8-456c-a923-12d030f3f46d ("Live in The AIR"), where 13 image files had been uploaded to a single record. Source file: ahmedMuhanna14.jpeg. Medium, location, and year are inherited from that parent record and are NOT independently verified for this work. Title is a placeholder pending the artist's own working title. Separation logged 2026-09-16. --- RIGHTS AND REPRODUCTION --- RESOLVED POSITION, stated by PAPA's Director of Operations / Art Collection Manager (Sky) on 2026-09-17 and applied across the "Life In The Air" intake: COPYRIGHT: retained by the artist, Ahmed Muhanna. PAPA does NOT hold copyright in this work. PAPA'S GRANT: reproduction and distribution rights only. PAPA is a licensee, not a rights owner. Nothing in PAPA's grant permits sub-licensing, assignment, or modification unless the contract states otherwise. ARTIST REVENUE: the artist receives 100 percent of NET profits from print sales. Net, not gross. Fulfilment, platform, payment processing, and shipping costs are deducted before the artist's share is calculated. CREDIT LINE: copyright must be attributed to the artist. Recommended form "(c) Ahmed Muhanna", with PAPA credited separately as distributor rather than as rights holder. CUSTODY OF THE CONTRACTS: executed contracts are held off-system by Sky, in the combined roles of Art Collection Manager and Director of Operations, and by the custodian's decision are not uploaded to this dataset. Contact the Art Collection Manager to consult them. Recorded on that authority; asserted in session and not independently verified by the archive. PRESERVATION RISK, CONTINUITY: rights documentation for this work exists only outside the content lake, in the custody of a single individual. If that custody lapses, PAPA's ability to evidence its licence is not recoverable from this archive. A second custodian, or a reference copy held by the foundation rather than an individual, would close this gap. Flagged as a preservation matter, not a compliance one. PUBLIC COPY CAUTION: because the artist's share is calculated on NET, public-facing material must not state or imply "100% of the sale price goes to the artist". The accurate phrasing is 100 percent of net profits. CONTRACT TERMS NOT YET TRANSCRIBED into this record, to be supplied by the custodian: date of execution, term, territory, and whether derivative print editions are expressly covered. DIMENSIONS: no dimensions are recorded for this work. Measurement was not possible at the point of capture and none were supplied with the source file. Not recoverable from the source material. Do not infer dimensions from image proportions or from the parent record. SOURCE FILE FIDELITY: source files for this intake were transmitted from Gaza over a bandwidth-constrained connection. The archived master may not represent the maximum available capture quality and may be insufficient for reproduction at or near the work's physical scale. Check the image asset's pixel dimensions against the intended print size before this work goes to print. INTAKE CONDITIONS: an authorized disclosure recording the circumstances of this intake is held on record c64b9175-dccf-48c8-8499-e0a0d3fee096 and is deliberately NOT duplicated here, to limit replication of sensitive information about the artist. SCOPE NOTE: this rights block was applied across all 13 records in the "Life In The Air" intake on 2026-09-17. --- EXHIBITION HISTORY AND CUSTODY OF ORIGINALS --- Recorded 2026-09-17 on the authority of PAPA (Sky, Art Collection Manager and Director of Operations). Asserted in session; not independently verified by the archive. CONTEXT OF THE BODY OF WORK: since 2024 the artist's defining body of work has been painting on World Food Programme aid boxes. The boxes carry the printed stamp "Not for sale or exchange", which the artist turns into a statement of his own: "we are not for sale or exchange." EXHIBITION: works by this artist were shown in "Gaza: Stories of Hope and Resilience", a travelling container exhibition organised by the World Food Programme and the European Union. It toured Europe in two seasons, September to October 2025 and May to June 2026, including a showing at the Institut du monde arabe, Paris. The artist could not leave Gaza to attend. The tour closed on 28 June 2026. PROVENANCE OF THE TOURED ORIGINALS IS UNKNOWN. WFP moved the works out of Gaza by a confidential route. Ownership, custody, and current physical location following the close of the tour on 28 June 2026 HAVE NOT BEEN ESTABLISHED. ACTION REQUIRED BEFORE ANY PRINT, SALE, OR COLLECTION CLAIM: ownership, custody, and current physical location of the originals must be established first. This applies to any PAPA print edition, any sale, and any public claim that PAPA holds, houses, or represents these works. Do not proceed to commerce on this record until that is resolved and recorded here. NOT DETERMINED: whether this specific work was among those toured. The Location field on this record reads "Gaza" and was inherited at separation from the parent record. It has not been verified since the tour and may no longer be accurate. PHYSICAL SURVIVAL: the artist's studio and canvases were reported destroyed in July 2026 (source: SceneNow, July 2026). Whether this specific work survives is Not yet recorded.
