As part of the Arabic Music Days, recent works by visual artists Zaria Zardasht (Syria) and Nadira Mahmoud (Oman) will be on display in the Mozart Auditorium of the Barenboim-Said Akademie.

Nadira Mahmoud is one of the leading visual artists of Oman—in 1993, she founded the country’s first art gallery in the capital, Muscat. Her works have been seen throughout the Arab world and in many European countries. Mahmoud’s simple, clean imagery draws on her perception of Omani topography and its colors.

The most recent paintings by Zaria Zardasht bear cryptic titles consisting of numbers and letters: they are geographic coordinates referring to cities the artist has lived in in the past. All these places have left traces in her memory in the form of colors and images, which Zardasht transforms into expressive paintings—like emotional satellite images of her life’s journey.