Editor’s Note: The following story contains mentions of sexual assault and harassment. To reach the National Sexual Assault Hotline, call 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit online.rainn.org.
Ridikkuluz opens their solo show at Salma Sarriedine gallery with a painting of George W. Bush as a Sunday painter with a loafer stuffed in his mouth — an allusion to Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi hurling his shoes at the president during a 2008 press conference in Baghdad. In the work, “Ya Kalb (tribute to Al-Zaidi)” (2026), Bush paints a white poodle with glowing blue eyes. A demonic presence lurks in the dog, foreshadowing dangers to come.
Ironically, that possessed poodle is the most docile dog in the entire show. Throughout, Ridikkuluz portrays Israeli soldiers as vicious dogs inflicting atrocities upon Palestinians and other Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) individuals. Although the Israeli military’s weaponization of dogs has been ongoing for some time, the widely reported uptick in its use of dog attacks on Palestinians has drawn global condemnation. Meanwhile, in prisons, Israeli soldiers command dogs to sodomize, maul, and humiliate Palestinian men. In Ridikkuluz’s work, the irascible dog emerges as a symbol for the ongoing genocide and its unrestrained perpetrators. The show’s title, Klab (كِلَاب), means “dogs” in Arabic, and is often used as an insult, taking on new meaning since the Israeli army’s latest offensive against Palestinians following October 7, 2023.
Later in the show, Ridikkuluz re-adapts Francisco de Goya’s famous 1814 painting, “The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid,” in which a Spanish man resists Napoleon’s soldiers. “You’re Next – the Fifteenth of May” (2026) commemorates May 15, 1948 as the start of the Nakba (النَّكْبَة), or “catastrophe,” in which an estimated 700,000 Palestinians were displaced, dispossessed, or killed during Israel’s formation between 1947 and 1949.
