Artist Stement

Spirits meet and begin feeling out their mutual existence through a disfigured memory, which reveals an uncertain yet deeply intimate presence.

Tamimi treats his visual elements both technically and sensually, transferring the emotional through the technical without having one dominate the other, and the painting, in its sensual construction, appears imbued with an intimate, symbolic energy, enveloping the scene with a relational mutuality that contains as much intimacy as it does strangeness.

The characters in the painting appear to be part of some sort of carnival procession, celebrating in their outlandish costumes, their eyes seemingly turned more inward than outward – despite their physical proximity, their similar features and shared behaviors, as if they were all a single family coming from an unknown place, united by the uncertainty of co-existence.

The intimacy in the relationships implies the spatial nature of the scene, and yet the “placeless” location reinforces a sense of isolation and the need for such intimate closeness and communication.

Tamimi depicts the problematic relationship at the heart of the modern experience, between the “self” as a highly complex entity and the “other” as an integral part of that self – both alien to it and fused with it.