The Boat - Abdalla Al Omari
World leaders in a precarious position
Reversed roles
The work of Syrian artist Abdalla Al Omari often explores power, conflict, and identity. Al Omari began his career in Damascus and now lives and works in Belgium. The Boat is part of The Vulnerability Series, in which he portrays world leaders not as powerful figures, but as people in a vulnerable position.
The painting The Boat by artist Abdalla Al Omari is five meters long. In the painting, Abdalla depicts world leaders such as Donald Trump, Angela Merkel, and Emmanuel Macron as people on the run, searching for a better life. The politicians are seated together in an overcrowded boat. Al Omari placed the leaders in provocative combinations: Merkel stands next to Orbán, and Trump and Kim Jong-un are placed together. By placing world leaders together in this vulnerable position, Al Omari tells us: we share responsibility for one another and for the world.
Photo: Titia Hahne
“If colonialism didn't happen, immigration maybe wouldn't happen the same way that it's happening now.”
King Leopold II
On World Refugee Day in 2026, Al Omari painted a new figure onto The Boat: King Leopold II of Belgium. Standing as a father figure on the boat, he symbolises what Al Omari sees as the origins of the way migration happens today.
Al Omari painted live in the exhibition All Directions at Fenix. The painting is never finished: leaders come and go, but the consequences of their choices remain.
In this video, he tells more about his choice to include King Leopold II.
Photo: floor besuijen
All Directions
This artwork is part of the exhibition All Directions, an exhibition in which you discover stories about identity, happiness and work, borders and flight, and home.
