Marwan Sahmarani was working on his ambitious Abraaj Capital Art Prize (ACAP) commission 'The Feast of the Damned' that encompasses a fantasy world inspired by the writings of Dante and the book of Revelation. He declares: “My paintings are a diagnosis of a reality that eludes me. I seek to isolate what is essential, to extract the truth, to find the essence of the moment, of the violence in action and the reality of a situation”.

This work is a study of an installation entitled 'The Feast of the Damned' that integrates painting, drawing, ceramics and film inspired by Hell: Fall of the Condemned Ones by Rubens. Sahmarani has created a three-dimensional space in which the themes of martyrdom and expiation are dealt with in a way that resembles the millennia-old techniques of fresco painting in combination with contemporary media. The themes of the work are rooted in the cultural traditions of the Middle East and are part of its contemporary socio-cultural reality, where various notions of evil are activated in political discourse at the service of agendas of control and violence, in association to gender, certain ideologies and civil society.