Guests were invited to view works by Zakaria Ramhani, Khaled Hafez, Mohammed Taman, Charbel Samuel Aoun, and Adel El Siwi at Tabari Artspace Gallery in DIFC and the Art Dubai art fair.
Due to the recent political climate in Egypt, the majority of the works by the artists were reworked from their original concept and focus. Many of our artists were Egyptian and involved first-hand in efforts towards the Egyptian revolution, so that they were expressively stimulated with emotions, opinions and ideas in creating a new body of work. This was therefore reflected in both what was exhibited in the gallery and at the Art Dubai Fair, and we were keen to promote and create awareness surrounding this. We have been pleased to garner much attention and coverage by the media in response.
The artists Zakaria Ramhani, Nadine Hammam and Khaled Hafez were all present at the gallery exhibition opening. Guests were able to freely mingle with them and discuss the paintings, whilst the diverse range of artworks on display enabled much varied interest amongst viewers. Overall the opening was a great success with a variety of people attending, from socialites to art enthusiasts, in addition to people working within the business hub of DIFC and the general public keen on perusing the opening exhibitions that a number of galleries in the Gate Village had to offer. It further enabled us to generate interest ahead of our Art Dubai stand, giving a taste of what to potentially expect.
Born in Tangiers (Morocco) in 1983, Zakaria Ramhani grew up in an artistic household. In 2006, Zakaria became the youngest person from his country to receive a bursary from the French government to participate in a creative residency at the Cité Internationale des arts in Paris. Through this direct contact with Western culture and international contemporary art, Ramhani developed new personal and artistic preoccupations. Upon his return to his Tangiers workshop in 2007, he involved himself with great urgency in a vast project that he calls De droite à gauche.
Ramhani’s early works developed a sense of isolated and expressive human figures placed in the foreground of compositions. These were saturated with colours and symbolic objects but devoid of a clear narrative, compelling feelings of idleness and desolation in the spectator.
His current works however use Arabic, sometimes juxtaposed with French and English, by superimposing letters, words and phrases to create layers of readable and non-readable matter that are shaped into vibrant and mesmerizing faces. He thus creates sets of paintings that are presented as polyptychs or diptychs and have quickly captivated people’s interest and generated many new avenues for his international career. Commenting on this new artistic approach he says “ When I returned home to Tangier after spending eight months living in France, I began writing on the canvas rather than painting on it. I no longer painted pictures; I wrote portraits.” Ramhani's pursuit of his resolutely expressive and spirited art has been vindicated, and it now freely extends itself into pictorial representations where the sacred, the poetic, and the political are echoes of the world's realities and absurdities.
Hani Zurob was born in Rafah (Gaza) in 1976. He achieved his Fine Arts degree in Nablus in 1999, before settling in Ramallah. In 2006 he received a grant allowing him to reside at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Since then he has been able to participate in solo shows in Atlanta, Marrakech and Paris, and several group exhibitions in Seoul, Damascus, Texas, the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds (UK), the 11th Cairo Biennale, and the more recent Palestine: La création dans tous ses états held at the Arab World Institute in Paris (2009) and then at the National Museum of Bahrain (2009).
He has also staged many solo exhibitions in Palestine and was awarded the Al-Qattan Foundation Young Artist Prize (Ramallah) in 2002. In 2009 Zurob was granted the Bourse et Prix Renoir.
Zurob’s work deals with situations and events that the artists has experienced, expressing no boundaries between political and private matter, eventually leading towards displacement.
He says, “What I try to do when I paint is to rewrite my life; I try to place myself as a witness of the situations and the events I experience… when painting displacement becomes a matter of exploring the state of Wait, Absence, Halt and Deferral, I wonder if I can still talk about the particularity of the bodies I paint by relating them to some local conditions or to any specific dates.
Charbel Samuel Aoun is an architect, sculptor and painter from Fanar, Lebanon. He has exhibited at the sculpture exhibition “Out of Space” at CCF Beirut in 2007, two painting exhibitions in 2009 “Mourasshah Intikhabi” and “Fattoush Beirut” in which he reflected deep feelings of his society, and the exhibition “Flows” in 2010 at the Artlounge Beirut.
Charbel considers himself a realist expressing the state of humanity as he sees it through his art; evoking reactions from his audience as a truth seeker as opposed to creating merely to please/amuse the viewer. His art is dark, thick with emotion and awe-inspiring. Light, energy and lines all play a big part in conveying this emotion – “Each line holds emotion and the form is a result of all these lines and emotions. I’m not imprisoning the spectator in the form; it’s the energy behind the form – the energy that exists behind the lines or in the visual aspect that you can see through the form sometimes. You can feel the transparency that takes you to another dimension.” He goes on to say “light takes me to some place I want to be. It’s like dematerialization while passing through this light. It’s like each person has his own sky, his own heaven. For me, that light is part of my heaven.” Rather than considering art as a career choice he personally feels it is a calling that cannot be ignored.
Nadine Hammam was born in Cairo in 1974. She studied at the American University in Cairo where she attained her BA in English and Comparative Literature and then went to London where she attained her MA in Fine Art at Central St. Martins.
Nadine’s work shows concern with gender politics and the dynamics of the male-female gaze. Using acrylics, she employs a multi-layering technique which eliminates all visible brush strokes in order to recreate a solid print-like image. As a result the paintings allude to the one dimensional gazes in an era of consumption. Her life-size nudes also speak to the context of her region, where the female body is shrouded and concealed. She currently works and lives in Cairo.
Born in Cairo, Egypt in 1963, Khaled Hafez lives and works in Cairo. From 1981 till 1990 Hafez followed the evening classes of the Cairo Fine Arts while studying medicine. He attained MFA in New Media from Transart Institute / Danube University Krems, Austria in 2009.
'I link imagery of the ancient iconography with deja-vu contemporary elements, hence the use of Anubis (God of the underworld) and Batman, Bastet (Goddess of domestication) and Cat-woman; the icons are manipulated to insinuate metamorphosis; I believe that we are at a point in history where there is cultural recycling: visual, conceptual, beliefs among other aspects.' (Khaled Hafez)
Works by Hafez are in the Saatchi Collection, London, UK, the Muhka Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, Belgium, Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art, Sarajevo, Bosnia and the Mali National Museum, Bamako, Mali.
George Bahgory was born in Egypt in 1935. In 1955, he studied at the Fine Arts Institute of Egypt and moved to Paris in 1970 where he continued his studies at the Fine Arts Institute of Paris. He went on to receive his PH.D in “Egyptian Drawings in Picasso Artworks” from Sorbon University. George Bahgory is mainly seen as a cartoonist. He focuses on music as well as iconic Middle Eastern figures in his art works such as Umm Kolthoum; “I am not painting Umm Kolthoum, but her voice, for to me her voice represents an important phase in modern Egyptian history. Voices can enchant us before our eyes catch on with passion and love”. His work focuses on both iconic Middle Eastern figures and can also be seen as a narrative on daily happenings. Bahgory's interest in cartoons dates back to his art-school days in Cairo following the Egyptian revolution. Fascinated by the power of caricature to highlight reality, Bahgory became the first cartoonist in Egypt to move into sophisticated commentary. He received many prestigious awards in Italy, Spain, France and Yugoslavia. Bahgory has also been credited as novelist with a distinguished journalistic style in drawing and editing. He has published six books, three of which were dedicated to art.
Born in Beheira in 1952, Egyptian painter Adel El Siwi first studied medicine in the early 1970’s before seriously considering a career as a painter. He had his first major show at the Cairo Atelier in 1985. Since then he has participated in solo shows in Egypt, Lebanon, Germany and Italy, and group exhibitions as far across the globe as South America. He is now based in Cairo and has exhibited a number of times with the gallery, as well as being represented by Artspace at 2010’s Art Dubai.
Known for his treatment of the human figure his latest works have been more narrative and ironic. Though focusing on the interior scape, he aims to give traditional life objects pride and powerful presence. Pure colors pierce the tonal elements, but are restrained by the somber Egyptian landscape marked by the monochromes of the desert and the grayness of Cairo, seen in his earlier works. For a considerable time, El Siwi strongly believed that the more limited the means the stronger the potential of the expression, thus refusing to use any other medium for painting but paper or canvas.
El Siwi’s recent paintings are meant to inspire individuals to reconnect with their communities and examine the relationship between the present moment and the past. He says “I tried to touch this relation through the human face for a very long time, yes the face: being old and recent in the same moment , now, perhaps I am haunting the same phantasm through the entire human figure.”In this way his work aims highlight the magic relation between our daily life, our present moment, and that which is old and deeply related to the far and remote past.
Mohammed Taman, born in Egypt in 1976, received a BA in visual arts from Helwan University in Egypt, and has since been awarded various residencies and UNESCO scholarships, at L'Ecole Supérieur d’art et de design de Reims and Université Lumiere Lyon 2. Taman's practice relies on chemical reactions; his handmade oil paints and pigments are laboriously superimposed, creating a wholly unique and dynamic integration of sombre hues & ghostly metallics.
The prize-winning artist has participated in various group and solo shows in Egypt and abroad. He lives and works in Cairo, Egypt and is currently completing his PhD in Multimedia Arts & Design.