Maarouf’s works have been exhibited at ArtDubai, the city’s art fair, and at Singapore’s recently opened Sana Gallery. Part of the “Afak” exhibition series founded by curator Razan Chatti, “Veto” consists of 25 mixed-media works along with one unusual installation.

This installation – after which the exhibition is named – consists of a round glass table stamped with the U.N. logo and surround by five toilet seats. On a shelf underneath that table, onlookers can see papers with the word “Veto” written on them in red capitals.

The relationship between the United Nations and the word “veto” should be transparent enough – the latter having become a metaphor for the ineffectualness of the former. “[My work] is about the veto decision,” Maarouf told The Daily Star at the show’s opening, “and on how it is not a democratic decision.” He went on to explain how one official figure makes a decision while the four others cannot vote. Placing toilet seats about the table rather than conference chairs, say, is a fairly explicit expression of the artist’s point of view. Accompanying this installation is a black-and-white self-portrait in which the artist is represented with a clothes peg pinching his nostrils closed, suggesting something of the symbolic odor arising, as the curatorial essay says, from such “one-sided resolutions that do not consider or respect ... freedom of human self-determination.” The Daily Star, Jan 6th 2013