Albareh Art Gallery is pleased to announce the addition of three new artists to its pool of represented talent, Sayeh Sarfaraz, Mohammad Tamimi and Samaan Khawam.
Sayeh Sarfaraz, an Iranian artist based in Canada, draws inspiration from the ‘constant anxiety of conflict, censorship, and the repression of the people of Iran’. Sarfaraz’s works have been exhibited in Canada, France, Germany and the US.
www.sayehsarfaraz.com
Mohammad Tamimi is a Jordanian artist who lives and works in Amman. A trained graphic designer, Tamimi works in acrylic on canvas, producing portraits that are at once familiar and disconcerting.
Semaan Khawam is a self-taught Lebanese painter, graffiti artist, writer, actor and poet based in Beirut. The multi-talented Khawam uses his art to ‘challenge official state censorship, sectarianism and limits on freedom of expression in the Middle East.’
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Albareh has recently launched its new website with expanded and up-to-date content featuring its artists, exhibitions, videos, past gallery publications, and a private area for members and collectors.
www.albareh.com
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V Group Art Exhibition
Ro’iya Art Consultancy, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
September 9 – 22
V Group Art Exhibition opened at Ro’iya Art Consultancy in Jeddah on September 9. The exhibition is curated by Albareh and features the works of five Egyptian women artists – Eman Osama, Hanan Elsheikh, Jehan Saleh, Shayma Kamel and Weaam El-Masry – in a visual discourse on womanhood.
Eman Osama, through her mixed media paintings, delves into the deep world of woman’s soul. Her works explore women’s physical and spiritual bond with nature. Fascinated by the purity and emotional depth conveyed by white as a colour, Hanan Elsheikh uses it as a thick backdrop in works that strive for an elusive balance. It is through these works that she articulates the unfolding of her self-discovery through an examination of her environment. Jehan Saleh fuses the perceived reality of portrait photography with the imaginary world of abstraction. The result is a haunting duality, much like that which characterizes the contradictions of women’s daily existence, in Egypt and elsewhere. Shayma Kamel’s paintings tackle women’s struggles more overtly. She draws her inspiration from daily life in Cairo where urban Egyptian imagery coexists with such universal images as Disney princesses striking uncomfortable and confronting contrasts. Weaam El Masry succinctly captures the tensions inherent in the life of an Egyptian woman as she negotiates social and emotional spaces in an attempt to fulfill contradictory expectations.
The resulting exhibition challenges the viewer to engage in an intellectual, albeit emotionally charged, dialogue on the complexity of Egyptian womanhood.
The exhibition will move to Albareh Art Gallery in Bahrain in December 2014.
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Camille Zakharia - Belonging
The Gallery at Emaar Pavilion and Cityscape, Dubai
September 2 – October 29
Belonging, an exhibition of photo collages by Lebanese artist Camille Zakharia, opened at The Gallery at Emaar Pavilion in Downtown Dubai on September 2. The exhibition features eight major artworks from Zakharia’s Belonging project which he started in 2010 as part of an attempt to understand what binds a person to a place. He photographed 42 people, all of whom were living in Bahrain at the time, and used the photographs to create a series of collages. The resulting beautifully disjointed images, often with little resemblance to the original participant, are eerily similar, as if to unconsciously betray Zakharia’s belief that individuals share more commonalities than differences.
A further ten works from the same project will be exhibited at Emaar’s stand at Cityscape from September 21 to 23.
emaargallery.com
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Sayeh Sarfaraz - Wolves in the Wall
The Invisible Dog Art Center, New York
September 13 – November 15
Sayeh Sarfaraz’s Wolves in the Wall opens at the Invisible Dog Art Center in New York on September 13. Curated by Montreal-based curator, writer and critic, Claire Moeder, the show comprises two installations by the Iranian-born Canadian artist, both custom-designed for the space. Each is made up of fragments from recent Middle East conflicts relating what the artist describes as an incomplete narrative.
Wolves in the Wall was made possible by grants from the Conseil des arts et des lettres Du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts.
theinvisibledog.org
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Annie Kurkdjian at Artcite 2014 “Inspirations”
Fontenay-sous-Bois, France
September 23 – October 18
The works of Lebanese artist Annie Kurkdjian have been selected to appear in Artcité 2014 “Inspirations”. Artcité is an annual exhibition of contemporary art aimed at a broad audience. Currently in its thirteenth edition, the group show features an eclectic mix of contemporary works in a wide range of media.
Born in Beirut, Kurkdjian continues to lives there today. Her work is deeply shaped by her experience of the Lebanese Civil War.
“The horrors and trauma of war are translated in her work as warm intimate spaces of metaphor and embodiment: transformations of the body, psychological horror, paralysis and deformity. Her paintings are conceived as academic studies on fear and psychosis.”
art-cite.fr
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