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Modernism meets anti-colonialism at Christie's Kawkaba
Highlights from the Barjeel Art Foundation go on show at London's historic auction house...
August 15, 2023
Kawkaba takes its meaning, constellation, quite literally; it’s a symbol of connections, but also of modernity, something typically stereotyped out of West Asia and North Africa. And so it starts with space - Abdel Hadi el Gazzar’s two Arabic astronauts, Menhat Helmy’s cosmic map of the universe, and Mohamed Melehi, looking more towards The Dark Side of Moon.
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Instantly recognisable, Melehi’s works join many more in this greatest-hits exhibition of modern and contemporary Arab art. We find Farid Belkahia and Mohamed Chabâa – the other two of the Casablanca Trio – alongside a smaller-than-usual mural by Chaïba Tallal, an opposite-of-Casablanca artist, and lesser-known than her contemporaries.
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Over four rooms, the Barjeel Art Foundation presents a ‘historical trajectory’ of the Arab World, ‘from the echoes of the colonial era to the present epoch’ – and one that is gender-balanced. But the works within them move back and forth in time, blending conventional and contemporary motifs, modern political leaders and medieval religious iconography.
We see how artists differently appropriate Western European modes of modern art production as a means of rejecting colonialism and, later, colonial legacies. But more implicit are the modernities pre-existing in traditional, local art forms. Heavy is the influence of Arabic calligraphy (Hurrafiyah), Maghrebin Amazigh symbolism, and Islamic geometry and shape work, especially in the works of Saloua Choucair and Jewad Selim.
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Others reimagine these traditional media and materials: in tapestry, Safia Farhat cuts out – and tugs at - the heartstrings of a young bride. Her textile works are marked ‘painted’; the more political come ‘executed’, like Samir Rafi’s lacquering of oil paint directly onto rugs, carpets, and burlap.
Sculptures deploy found objects from the local environment, from Abdul Hay Mosallam Zarara’s colourful sawdust rocket launch to Vera Tamari’s intimate ceramic reliefs of Palestinian women at work. More critical are the tiny bronzes and porcelain biscuits of Mona Hatoum; born into a Palestinian family in exile in Lebanon, she reproduces a monument in Beirut, shot with bullets since the civil war.
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Aref el Rayess abstracts the country’s desert landscapes. In his Cairo ‘Hôtel des Rois (Hotel of the Kings)’ (1950), Hamed Abdalla remodels the cut-outs of Henri Matisse in paint. Indeed, there are few stereotypical bustling market scenes and bountiful fruit trees to be found here. Opposite both sit works in soft pinks, with suggestive orifices, heavily erotic works which similarly destroy simplistic ideas of modesty attached to the region.
Experiments in cubism further highlight these artists’ imaginative engagement with their European contemporaries. Crazy horses – which rampage in the works of Pablo Picasso, and the post-war Cobra artists – crop up in the works of Kadhim Hayder, Naziha Salim, and Jumana El Husseini. Mohamed Ghani Hiikmat’s ‘Gateway to the West’ (1975-1976), a colossal, carved wooden door, hints at migrations both creative and practical. It gazes across the hall to a work by Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, the Sudanese icon who once studied in London.
%2C%20Kamala%20Ibrahim%20Ishaq%20(1973)-min.jpg)
Captions – clad scantily with context – still imply transnational solidarities, in how artists have travelled across the oft-homogenised ‘Arab World’. Baya, an Algerian painter who practised in Paris, is one of many to present works with French language titles, exposing the historic and continued cultural legacies of empires. Her figurative brushwork sits alongside a plurality of women, whether Nubian family portraits, or Ezekiel Baroukh’s more conventionally European, and light-skinned, subjects.
Mounirah Mosly’s veiled monoliths and moai stand cloaked in secrecy. More ambiguous are Marwan’s covered faces, which encourage enquiry into the nature of his migration from Damascus in Syria to Berlin. (Here too, how Mahmoud Sabri arrived in Maidenhead from Baghdad; another instance where a caption could have helped.) His abstraction gets more explicit in the final room, with a large face which becomes visible only when we take a step back.
%2C%20Leila%20Nseir%20(1978).jpeg)
The politics – on modernism and nation building – comes more explicitly too in the room captioned with the names of arrested artists, and familiars, like Fahrelnissa Zeid and Dia Al-Azzawi. It’s also characterised by works curated in contrast; Leila Nseir’s pale, individual sacrifice, next to the boldly coloured ‘Palestine’ (1998), by Abdulhalim Radwi.
Stocky, solid figures suggest connections with the traditions of Mexican muralism; yet, according to Fatma Arargi, even a revolutionary must stop for lunch. We can only speculate, without words. Still, the great strength in this almost-gallery-hang is that the great diversity of works seen on a single wall – in media, scale, subject, and location – implicitly reflects the great diversity of the region.
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Perhaps a commercial space like Christie’s is best placed to display works in this fashion. Yet its imposing staircase and rich blue walls may betray the fact this exhibition is free to access. (‘Is there anything I can buy?’, a refrain oft overheard, and always met with disappointment when a buyer hears the works are only on loan.) But we must encourage more of these public exhibitions, and gaze at them whilst we can. Kawkaba is a rare opportunity to see so many of these stars.
Kawkaba: Highlights from the Barjeel Art Foundation is on view at Christie’s London until 23 August 2023, as part of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Kawkaba takes its meaning, constellation, quite literally; it’s a symbol of connections, but also of modernity, something typically stereotyped out of West Asia and North Africa. And so it starts with space - Abdel Hadi el Gazzar’s two Arabic astronauts, Menhat Helmy’s cosmic map of the universe, and Mohamed Melehi, looking more towards The Dark Side of Moon.
Instantly recognisable, Melehi’s works join many more in this greatest-hits exhibition of modern and contemporary Arab art. We find Farid Belkahia and Mohamed Chabâa – the other two of the Casablanca Trio – alongside a smaller-than-usual mural by Chaïba Tallal, an opposite-of-Casablanca artist, and lesser-known than her contemporaries.
Over four rooms, the Barjeel Art Foundation presents a ‘historical trajectory’ of the Arab World, ‘from the echoes of the colonial era to the present epoch’ – and one that is gender-balanced. But the works within them move back and forth in time, blending conventional and contemporary motifs, modern political leaders and medieval religious iconography.
We see how artists differently appropriate Western European modes of modern art production as a means of rejecting colonialism and, later, colonial legacies. But more implicit are the modernities pre-existing in traditional, local art forms. Heavy is the influence of Arabic calligraphy (Hurrafiyah), Maghrebin Amazigh symbolism, and Islamic geometry and shape work, especially in the works of Saloua Choucair and Jewad Selim.
Others reimagine these traditional media and materials: in tapestry, Safia Farhat cuts out – and tugs at - the heartstrings of a young bride. Her textile works are marked ‘painted’; the more political come ‘executed’, like Samir Rafi’s lacquering of oil paint directly onto rugs, carpets, and burlap.
Sculptures deploy found objects from the local environment, from Abdul Hay Mosallam Zarara’s colourful sawdust rocket launch to Vera Tamari’s intimate ceramic reliefs of Palestinian women at work. More critical are the tiny bronzes and porcelain biscuits of Mona Hatoum; born into a Palestinian family in exile in Lebanon, she reproduces a monument in Beirut, shot with bullets since the civil war.
Aref el Rayess abstracts the country’s desert landscapes. In his Cairo ‘Hôtel des Rois (Hotel of the Kings)’ (1950), Hamed Abdalla remodels the cut-outs of Henri Matisse in paint. Indeed, there are few stereotypical bustling market scenes and bountiful fruit trees to be found here. Opposite both sit works in soft pinks, with suggestive orifices, heavily erotic works which similarly destroy simplistic ideas of modesty attached to the region.
Experiments in cubism further highlight these artists’ imaginative engagement with their European contemporaries. Crazy horses – which rampage in the works of Pablo Picasso, and the post-war Cobra artists – crop up in the works of Kadhim Hayder, Naziha Salim, and Jumana El Husseini. Mohamed Ghani Hiikmat’s ‘Gateway to the West’ (1975-1976), a colossal, carved wooden door, hints at migrations both creative and practical. It gazes across the hall to a work by Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, the Sudanese icon who once studied in London.
Captions – clad scantily with context – still imply transnational solidarities, in how artists have travelled across the oft-homogenised ‘Arab World’. Baya, an Algerian painter who practised in Paris, is one of many to present works with French language titles, exposing the historic and continued cultural legacies of empires. Her figurative brushwork sits alongside a plurality of women, whether Nubian family portraits, or Ezekiel Baroukh’s more conventionally European, and light-skinned, subjects.
Mounirah Mosly’s veiled monoliths and moai stand cloaked in secrecy. More ambiguous are Marwan’s covered faces, which encourage enquiry into the nature of his migration from Damascus in Syria to Berlin. (Here too, how Mahmoud Sabri arrived in Maidenhead from Baghdad; another instance where a caption could have helped.) His abstraction gets more explicit in the final room, with a large face which becomes visible only when we take a step back.
The politics – on modernism and nation building – comes more explicitly too in the room captioned with the names of arrested artists, and familiars, like Fahrelnissa Zeid and Dia Al-Azzawi. It’s also characterised by works curated in contrast; Leila Nseir’s pale, individual sacrifice, next to the boldly coloured ‘Palestine’ (1998), by Abdulhalim Radwi.
Stocky, solid figures suggest connections with the traditions of Mexican muralism; yet, according to Fatma Arargi, even a revolutionary must stop for lunch. We can only speculate, without words. Still, the great strength in this almost-gallery-hang is that the great diversity of works seen on a single wall – in media, scale, subject, and location – implicitly reflects the great diversity of the region.
Perhaps a commercial space like Christie’s is best placed to display works in this fashion. Yet its imposing staircase and rich blue walls may betray the fact this exhibition is free to access. (‘Is there anything I can buy?’, a refrain oft overheard, and always met with disappointment when a buyer hears the works are only on loan.) But we must encourage more of these public exhibitions, and gaze at them whilst we can. Kawkaba is a rare opportunity to see so many of these stars.
Kawkaba: Highlights from the Barjeel Art Foundation is on view at Christie’s London until 23 August 2023, as part of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Kawkaba takes its meaning, constellation, quite literally; it’s a symbol of connections, but also of modernity, something typically stereotyped out of West Asia and North Africa. And so it starts with space - Abdel Hadi el Gazzar’s two Arabic astronauts, Menhat Helmy’s cosmic map of the universe, and Mohamed Melehi, looking more towards The Dark Side of Moon.
Instantly recognisable, Melehi’s works join many more in this greatest-hits exhibition of modern and contemporary Arab art. We find Farid Belkahia and Mohamed Chabâa – the other two of the Casablanca Trio – alongside a smaller-than-usual mural by Chaïba Tallal, an opposite-of-Casablanca artist, and lesser-known than her contemporaries.
Over four rooms, the Barjeel Art Foundation presents a ‘historical trajectory’ of the Arab World, ‘from the echoes of the colonial era to the present epoch’ – and one that is gender-balanced. But the works within them move back and forth in time, blending conventional and contemporary motifs, modern political leaders and medieval religious iconography.
We see how artists differently appropriate Western European modes of modern art production as a means of rejecting colonialism and, later, colonial legacies. But more implicit are the modernities pre-existing in traditional, local art forms. Heavy is the influence of Arabic calligraphy (Hurrafiyah), Maghrebin Amazigh symbolism, and Islamic geometry and shape work, especially in the works of Saloua Choucair and Jewad Selim.
Others reimagine these traditional media and materials: in tapestry, Safia Farhat cuts out – and tugs at - the heartstrings of a young bride. Her textile works are marked ‘painted’; the more political come ‘executed’, like Samir Rafi’s lacquering of oil paint directly onto rugs, carpets, and burlap.
Sculptures deploy found objects from the local environment, from Abdul Hay Mosallam Zarara’s colourful sawdust rocket launch to Vera Tamari’s intimate ceramic reliefs of Palestinian women at work. More critical are the tiny bronzes and porcelain biscuits of Mona Hatoum; born into a Palestinian family in exile in Lebanon, she reproduces a monument in Beirut, shot with bullets since the civil war.
Aref el Rayess abstracts the country’s desert landscapes. In his Cairo ‘Hôtel des Rois (Hotel of the Kings)’ (1950), Hamed Abdalla remodels the cut-outs of Henri Matisse in paint. Indeed, there are few stereotypical bustling market scenes and bountiful fruit trees to be found here. Opposite both sit works in soft pinks, with suggestive orifices, heavily erotic works which similarly destroy simplistic ideas of modesty attached to the region.
Experiments in cubism further highlight these artists’ imaginative engagement with their European contemporaries. Crazy horses – which rampage in the works of Pablo Picasso, and the post-war Cobra artists – crop up in the works of Kadhim Hayder, Naziha Salim, and Jumana El Husseini. Mohamed Ghani Hiikmat’s ‘Gateway to the West’ (1975-1976), a colossal, carved wooden door, hints at migrations both creative and practical. It gazes across the hall to a work by Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, the Sudanese icon who once studied in London.
Captions – clad scantily with context – still imply transnational solidarities, in how artists have travelled across the oft-homogenised ‘Arab World’. Baya, an Algerian painter who practised in Paris, is one of many to present works with French language titles, exposing the historic and continued cultural legacies of empires. Her figurative brushwork sits alongside a plurality of women, whether Nubian family portraits, or Ezekiel Baroukh’s more conventionally European, and light-skinned, subjects.
Mounirah Mosly’s veiled monoliths and moai stand cloaked in secrecy. More ambiguous are Marwan’s covered faces, which encourage enquiry into the nature of his migration from Damascus in Syria to Berlin. (Here too, how Mahmoud Sabri arrived in Maidenhead from Baghdad; another instance where a caption could have helped.) His abstraction gets more explicit in the final room, with a large face which becomes visible only when we take a step back.
The politics – on modernism and nation building – comes more explicitly too in the room captioned with the names of arrested artists, and familiars, like Fahrelnissa Zeid and Dia Al-Azzawi. It’s also characterised by works curated in contrast; Leila Nseir’s pale, individual sacrifice, next to the boldly coloured ‘Palestine’ (1998), by Abdulhalim Radwi.
Stocky, solid figures suggest connections with the traditions of Mexican muralism; yet, according to Fatma Arargi, even a revolutionary must stop for lunch. We can only speculate, without words. Still, the great strength in this almost-gallery-hang is that the great diversity of works seen on a single wall – in media, scale, subject, and location – implicitly reflects the great diversity of the region.
Perhaps a commercial space like Christie’s is best placed to display works in this fashion. Yet its imposing staircase and rich blue walls may betray the fact this exhibition is free to access. (‘Is there anything I can buy?’, a refrain oft overheard, and always met with disappointment when a buyer hears the works are only on loan.) But we must encourage more of these public exhibitions, and gaze at them whilst we can. Kawkaba is a rare opportunity to see so many of these stars.
Kawkaba: Highlights from the Barjeel Art Foundation is on view at Christie’s London until 23 August 2023, as part of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Kawkaba takes its meaning, constellation, quite literally; it’s a symbol of connections, but also of modernity, something typically stereotyped out of West Asia and North Africa. And so it starts with space - Abdel Hadi el Gazzar’s two Arabic astronauts, Menhat Helmy’s cosmic map of the universe, and Mohamed Melehi, looking more towards The Dark Side of Moon.
Instantly recognisable, Melehi’s works join many more in this greatest-hits exhibition of modern and contemporary Arab art. We find Farid Belkahia and Mohamed Chabâa – the other two of the Casablanca Trio – alongside a smaller-than-usual mural by Chaïba Tallal, an opposite-of-Casablanca artist, and lesser-known than her contemporaries.
Over four rooms, the Barjeel Art Foundation presents a ‘historical trajectory’ of the Arab World, ‘from the echoes of the colonial era to the present epoch’ – and one that is gender-balanced. But the works within them move back and forth in time, blending conventional and contemporary motifs, modern political leaders and medieval religious iconography.
We see how artists differently appropriate Western European modes of modern art production as a means of rejecting colonialism and, later, colonial legacies. But more implicit are the modernities pre-existing in traditional, local art forms. Heavy is the influence of Arabic calligraphy (Hurrafiyah), Maghrebin Amazigh symbolism, and Islamic geometry and shape work, especially in the works of Saloua Choucair and Jewad Selim.
Others reimagine these traditional media and materials: in tapestry, Safia Farhat cuts out – and tugs at - the heartstrings of a young bride. Her textile works are marked ‘painted’; the more political come ‘executed’, like Samir Rafi’s lacquering of oil paint directly onto rugs, carpets, and burlap.
Sculptures deploy found objects from the local environment, from Abdul Hay Mosallam Zarara’s colourful sawdust rocket launch to Vera Tamari’s intimate ceramic reliefs of Palestinian women at work. More critical are the tiny bronzes and porcelain biscuits of Mona Hatoum; born into a Palestinian family in exile in Lebanon, she reproduces a monument in Beirut, shot with bullets since the civil war.
Aref el Rayess abstracts the country’s desert landscapes. In his Cairo ‘Hôtel des Rois (Hotel of the Kings)’ (1950), Hamed Abdalla remodels the cut-outs of Henri Matisse in paint. Indeed, there are few stereotypical bustling market scenes and bountiful fruit trees to be found here. Opposite both sit works in soft pinks, with suggestive orifices, heavily erotic works which similarly destroy simplistic ideas of modesty attached to the region.
Experiments in cubism further highlight these artists’ imaginative engagement with their European contemporaries. Crazy horses – which rampage in the works of Pablo Picasso, and the post-war Cobra artists – crop up in the works of Kadhim Hayder, Naziha Salim, and Jumana El Husseini. Mohamed Ghani Hiikmat’s ‘Gateway to the West’ (1975-1976), a colossal, carved wooden door, hints at migrations both creative and practical. It gazes across the hall to a work by Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, the Sudanese icon who once studied in London.
Captions – clad scantily with context – still imply transnational solidarities, in how artists have travelled across the oft-homogenised ‘Arab World’. Baya, an Algerian painter who practised in Paris, is one of many to present works with French language titles, exposing the historic and continued cultural legacies of empires. Her figurative brushwork sits alongside a plurality of women, whether Nubian family portraits, or Ezekiel Baroukh’s more conventionally European, and light-skinned, subjects.
Mounirah Mosly’s veiled monoliths and moai stand cloaked in secrecy. More ambiguous are Marwan’s covered faces, which encourage enquiry into the nature of his migration from Damascus in Syria to Berlin. (Here too, how Mahmoud Sabri arrived in Maidenhead from Baghdad; another instance where a caption could have helped.) His abstraction gets more explicit in the final room, with a large face which becomes visible only when we take a step back.
The politics – on modernism and nation building – comes more explicitly too in the room captioned with the names of arrested artists, and familiars, like Fahrelnissa Zeid and Dia Al-Azzawi. It’s also characterised by works curated in contrast; Leila Nseir’s pale, individual sacrifice, next to the boldly coloured ‘Palestine’ (1998), by Abdulhalim Radwi.
Stocky, solid figures suggest connections with the traditions of Mexican muralism; yet, according to Fatma Arargi, even a revolutionary must stop for lunch. We can only speculate, without words. Still, the great strength in this almost-gallery-hang is that the great diversity of works seen on a single wall – in media, scale, subject, and location – implicitly reflects the great diversity of the region.
Perhaps a commercial space like Christie’s is best placed to display works in this fashion. Yet its imposing staircase and rich blue walls may betray the fact this exhibition is free to access. (‘Is there anything I can buy?’, a refrain oft overheard, and always met with disappointment when a buyer hears the works are only on loan.) But we must encourage more of these public exhibitions, and gaze at them whilst we can. Kawkaba is a rare opportunity to see so many of these stars.
Kawkaba: Highlights from the Barjeel Art Foundation is on view at Christie’s London until 23 August 2023, as part of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Kawkaba takes its meaning, constellation, quite literally; it’s a symbol of connections, but also of modernity, something typically stereotyped out of West Asia and North Africa. And so it starts with space - Abdel Hadi el Gazzar’s two Arabic astronauts, Menhat Helmy’s cosmic map of the universe, and Mohamed Melehi, looking more towards The Dark Side of Moon.
Instantly recognisable, Melehi’s works join many more in this greatest-hits exhibition of modern and contemporary Arab art. We find Farid Belkahia and Mohamed Chabâa – the other two of the Casablanca Trio – alongside a smaller-than-usual mural by Chaïba Tallal, an opposite-of-Casablanca artist, and lesser-known than her contemporaries.
Over four rooms, the Barjeel Art Foundation presents a ‘historical trajectory’ of the Arab World, ‘from the echoes of the colonial era to the present epoch’ – and one that is gender-balanced. But the works within them move back and forth in time, blending conventional and contemporary motifs, modern political leaders and medieval religious iconography.
We see how artists differently appropriate Western European modes of modern art production as a means of rejecting colonialism and, later, colonial legacies. But more implicit are the modernities pre-existing in traditional, local art forms. Heavy is the influence of Arabic calligraphy (Hurrafiyah), Maghrebin Amazigh symbolism, and Islamic geometry and shape work, especially in the works of Saloua Choucair and Jewad Selim.
Others reimagine these traditional media and materials: in tapestry, Safia Farhat cuts out – and tugs at - the heartstrings of a young bride. Her textile works are marked ‘painted’; the more political come ‘executed’, like Samir Rafi’s lacquering of oil paint directly onto rugs, carpets, and burlap.
Sculptures deploy found objects from the local environment, from Abdul Hay Mosallam Zarara’s colourful sawdust rocket launch to Vera Tamari’s intimate ceramic reliefs of Palestinian women at work. More critical are the tiny bronzes and porcelain biscuits of Mona Hatoum; born into a Palestinian family in exile in Lebanon, she reproduces a monument in Beirut, shot with bullets since the civil war.
Aref el Rayess abstracts the country’s desert landscapes. In his Cairo ‘Hôtel des Rois (Hotel of the Kings)’ (1950), Hamed Abdalla remodels the cut-outs of Henri Matisse in paint. Indeed, there are few stereotypical bustling market scenes and bountiful fruit trees to be found here. Opposite both sit works in soft pinks, with suggestive orifices, heavily erotic works which similarly destroy simplistic ideas of modesty attached to the region.
Experiments in cubism further highlight these artists’ imaginative engagement with their European contemporaries. Crazy horses – which rampage in the works of Pablo Picasso, and the post-war Cobra artists – crop up in the works of Kadhim Hayder, Naziha Salim, and Jumana El Husseini. Mohamed Ghani Hiikmat’s ‘Gateway to the West’ (1975-1976), a colossal, carved wooden door, hints at migrations both creative and practical. It gazes across the hall to a work by Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, the Sudanese icon who once studied in London.
Captions – clad scantily with context – still imply transnational solidarities, in how artists have travelled across the oft-homogenised ‘Arab World’. Baya, an Algerian painter who practised in Paris, is one of many to present works with French language titles, exposing the historic and continued cultural legacies of empires. Her figurative brushwork sits alongside a plurality of women, whether Nubian family portraits, or Ezekiel Baroukh’s more conventionally European, and light-skinned, subjects.
Mounirah Mosly’s veiled monoliths and moai stand cloaked in secrecy. More ambiguous are Marwan’s covered faces, which encourage enquiry into the nature of his migration from Damascus in Syria to Berlin. (Here too, how Mahmoud Sabri arrived in Maidenhead from Baghdad; another instance where a caption could have helped.) His abstraction gets more explicit in the final room, with a large face which becomes visible only when we take a step back.
The politics – on modernism and nation building – comes more explicitly too in the room captioned with the names of arrested artists, and familiars, like Fahrelnissa Zeid and Dia Al-Azzawi. It’s also characterised by works curated in contrast; Leila Nseir’s pale, individual sacrifice, next to the boldly coloured ‘Palestine’ (1998), by Abdulhalim Radwi.
Stocky, solid figures suggest connections with the traditions of Mexican muralism; yet, according to Fatma Arargi, even a revolutionary must stop for lunch. We can only speculate, without words. Still, the great strength in this almost-gallery-hang is that the great diversity of works seen on a single wall – in media, scale, subject, and location – implicitly reflects the great diversity of the region.
Perhaps a commercial space like Christie’s is best placed to display works in this fashion. Yet its imposing staircase and rich blue walls may betray the fact this exhibition is free to access. (‘Is there anything I can buy?’, a refrain oft overheard, and always met with disappointment when a buyer hears the works are only on loan.) But we must encourage more of these public exhibitions, and gaze at them whilst we can. Kawkaba is a rare opportunity to see so many of these stars.
Kawkaba: Highlights from the Barjeel Art Foundation is on view at Christie’s London until 23 August 2023, as part of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Kawkaba takes its meaning, constellation, quite literally; it’s a symbol of connections, but also of modernity, something typically stereotyped out of West Asia and North Africa. And so it starts with space - Abdel Hadi el Gazzar’s two Arabic astronauts, Menhat Helmy’s cosmic map of the universe, and Mohamed Melehi, looking more towards The Dark Side of Moon.
Instantly recognisable, Melehi’s works join many more in this greatest-hits exhibition of modern and contemporary Arab art. We find Farid Belkahia and Mohamed Chabâa – the other two of the Casablanca Trio – alongside a smaller-than-usual mural by Chaïba Tallal, an opposite-of-Casablanca artist, and lesser-known than her contemporaries.
Over four rooms, the Barjeel Art Foundation presents a ‘historical trajectory’ of the Arab World, ‘from the echoes of the colonial era to the present epoch’ – and one that is gender-balanced. But the works within them move back and forth in time, blending conventional and contemporary motifs, modern political leaders and medieval religious iconography.
We see how artists differently appropriate Western European modes of modern art production as a means of rejecting colonialism and, later, colonial legacies. But more implicit are the modernities pre-existing in traditional, local art forms. Heavy is the influence of Arabic calligraphy (Hurrafiyah), Maghrebin Amazigh symbolism, and Islamic geometry and shape work, especially in the works of Saloua Choucair and Jewad Selim.
Others reimagine these traditional media and materials: in tapestry, Safia Farhat cuts out – and tugs at - the heartstrings of a young bride. Her textile works are marked ‘painted’; the more political come ‘executed’, like Samir Rafi’s lacquering of oil paint directly onto rugs, carpets, and burlap.
Sculptures deploy found objects from the local environment, from Abdul Hay Mosallam Zarara’s colourful sawdust rocket launch to Vera Tamari’s intimate ceramic reliefs of Palestinian women at work. More critical are the tiny bronzes and porcelain biscuits of Mona Hatoum; born into a Palestinian family in exile in Lebanon, she reproduces a monument in Beirut, shot with bullets since the civil war.
Aref el Rayess abstracts the country’s desert landscapes. In his Cairo ‘Hôtel des Rois (Hotel of the Kings)’ (1950), Hamed Abdalla remodels the cut-outs of Henri Matisse in paint. Indeed, there are few stereotypical bustling market scenes and bountiful fruit trees to be found here. Opposite both sit works in soft pinks, with suggestive orifices, heavily erotic works which similarly destroy simplistic ideas of modesty attached to the region.
Experiments in cubism further highlight these artists’ imaginative engagement with their European contemporaries. Crazy horses – which rampage in the works of Pablo Picasso, and the post-war Cobra artists – crop up in the works of Kadhim Hayder, Naziha Salim, and Jumana El Husseini. Mohamed Ghani Hiikmat’s ‘Gateway to the West’ (1975-1976), a colossal, carved wooden door, hints at migrations both creative and practical. It gazes across the hall to a work by Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, the Sudanese icon who once studied in London.
Captions – clad scantily with context – still imply transnational solidarities, in how artists have travelled across the oft-homogenised ‘Arab World’. Baya, an Algerian painter who practised in Paris, is one of many to present works with French language titles, exposing the historic and continued cultural legacies of empires. Her figurative brushwork sits alongside a plurality of women, whether Nubian family portraits, or Ezekiel Baroukh’s more conventionally European, and light-skinned, subjects.
Mounirah Mosly’s veiled monoliths and moai stand cloaked in secrecy. More ambiguous are Marwan’s covered faces, which encourage enquiry into the nature of his migration from Damascus in Syria to Berlin. (Here too, how Mahmoud Sabri arrived in Maidenhead from Baghdad; another instance where a caption could have helped.) His abstraction gets more explicit in the final room, with a large face which becomes visible only when we take a step back.
The politics – on modernism and nation building – comes more explicitly too in the room captioned with the names of arrested artists, and familiars, like Fahrelnissa Zeid and Dia Al-Azzawi. It’s also characterised by works curated in contrast; Leila Nseir’s pale, individual sacrifice, next to the boldly coloured ‘Palestine’ (1998), by Abdulhalim Radwi.
Stocky, solid figures suggest connections with the traditions of Mexican muralism; yet, according to Fatma Arargi, even a revolutionary must stop for lunch. We can only speculate, without words. Still, the great strength in this almost-gallery-hang is that the great diversity of works seen on a single wall – in media, scale, subject, and location – implicitly reflects the great diversity of the region.
Perhaps a commercial space like Christie’s is best placed to display works in this fashion. Yet its imposing staircase and rich blue walls may betray the fact this exhibition is free to access. (‘Is there anything I can buy?’, a refrain oft overheard, and always met with disappointment when a buyer hears the works are only on loan.) But we must encourage more of these public exhibitions, and gaze at them whilst we can. Kawkaba is a rare opportunity to see so many of these stars.
Kawkaba: Highlights from the Barjeel Art Foundation is on view at Christie’s London until 23 August 2023, as part of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Kawkaba takes its meaning, constellation, quite literally; it’s a symbol of connections, but also of modernity, something typically stereotyped out of West Asia and North Africa. And so it starts with space - Abdel Hadi el Gazzar’s two Arabic astronauts, Menhat Helmy’s cosmic map of the universe, and Mohamed Melehi, looking more towards The Dark Side of Moon.
Instantly recognisable, Melehi’s works join many more in this greatest-hits exhibition of modern and contemporary Arab art. We find Farid Belkahia and Mohamed Chabâa – the other two of the Casablanca Trio – alongside a smaller-than-usual mural by Chaïba Tallal, an opposite-of-Casablanca artist, and lesser-known than her contemporaries.
Over four rooms, the Barjeel Art Foundation presents a ‘historical trajectory’ of the Arab World, ‘from the echoes of the colonial era to the present epoch’ – and one that is gender-balanced. But the works within them move back and forth in time, blending conventional and contemporary motifs, modern political leaders and medieval religious iconography.
We see how artists differently appropriate Western European modes of modern art production as a means of rejecting colonialism and, later, colonial legacies. But more implicit are the modernities pre-existing in traditional, local art forms. Heavy is the influence of Arabic calligraphy (Hurrafiyah), Maghrebin Amazigh symbolism, and Islamic geometry and shape work, especially in the works of Saloua Choucair and Jewad Selim.
Others reimagine these traditional media and materials: in tapestry, Safia Farhat cuts out – and tugs at - the heartstrings of a young bride. Her textile works are marked ‘painted’; the more political come ‘executed’, like Samir Rafi’s lacquering of oil paint directly onto rugs, carpets, and burlap.
Sculptures deploy found objects from the local environment, from Abdul Hay Mosallam Zarara’s colourful sawdust rocket launch to Vera Tamari’s intimate ceramic reliefs of Palestinian women at work. More critical are the tiny bronzes and porcelain biscuits of Mona Hatoum; born into a Palestinian family in exile in Lebanon, she reproduces a monument in Beirut, shot with bullets since the civil war.
Aref el Rayess abstracts the country’s desert landscapes. In his Cairo ‘Hôtel des Rois (Hotel of the Kings)’ (1950), Hamed Abdalla remodels the cut-outs of Henri Matisse in paint. Indeed, there are few stereotypical bustling market scenes and bountiful fruit trees to be found here. Opposite both sit works in soft pinks, with suggestive orifices, heavily erotic works which similarly destroy simplistic ideas of modesty attached to the region.
Experiments in cubism further highlight these artists’ imaginative engagement with their European contemporaries. Crazy horses – which rampage in the works of Pablo Picasso, and the post-war Cobra artists – crop up in the works of Kadhim Hayder, Naziha Salim, and Jumana El Husseini. Mohamed Ghani Hiikmat’s ‘Gateway to the West’ (1975-1976), a colossal, carved wooden door, hints at migrations both creative and practical. It gazes across the hall to a work by Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, the Sudanese icon who once studied in London.
Captions – clad scantily with context – still imply transnational solidarities, in how artists have travelled across the oft-homogenised ‘Arab World’. Baya, an Algerian painter who practised in Paris, is one of many to present works with French language titles, exposing the historic and continued cultural legacies of empires. Her figurative brushwork sits alongside a plurality of women, whether Nubian family portraits, or Ezekiel Baroukh’s more conventionally European, and light-skinned, subjects.
Mounirah Mosly’s veiled monoliths and moai stand cloaked in secrecy. More ambiguous are Marwan’s covered faces, which encourage enquiry into the nature of his migration from Damascus in Syria to Berlin. (Here too, how Mahmoud Sabri arrived in Maidenhead from Baghdad; another instance where a caption could have helped.) His abstraction gets more explicit in the final room, with a large face which becomes visible only when we take a step back.
The politics – on modernism and nation building – comes more explicitly too in the room captioned with the names of arrested artists, and familiars, like Fahrelnissa Zeid and Dia Al-Azzawi. It’s also characterised by works curated in contrast; Leila Nseir’s pale, individual sacrifice, next to the boldly coloured ‘Palestine’ (1998), by Abdulhalim Radwi.
Stocky, solid figures suggest connections with the traditions of Mexican muralism; yet, according to Fatma Arargi, even a revolutionary must stop for lunch. We can only speculate, without words. Still, the great strength in this almost-gallery-hang is that the great diversity of works seen on a single wall – in media, scale, subject, and location – implicitly reflects the great diversity of the region.
Perhaps a commercial space like Christie’s is best placed to display works in this fashion. Yet its imposing staircase and rich blue walls may betray the fact this exhibition is free to access. (‘Is there anything I can buy?’, a refrain oft overheard, and always met with disappointment when a buyer hears the works are only on loan.) But we must encourage more of these public exhibitions, and gaze at them whilst we can. Kawkaba is a rare opportunity to see so many of these stars.
Kawkaba: Highlights from the Barjeel Art Foundation is on view at Christie’s London until 23 August 2023, as part of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Kawkaba takes its meaning, constellation, quite literally; it’s a symbol of connections, but also of modernity, something typically stereotyped out of West Asia and North Africa. And so it starts with space - Abdel Hadi el Gazzar’s two Arabic astronauts, Menhat Helmy’s cosmic map of the universe, and Mohamed Melehi, looking more towards The Dark Side of Moon.
Instantly recognisable, Melehi’s works join many more in this greatest-hits exhibition of modern and contemporary Arab art. We find Farid Belkahia and Mohamed Chabâa – the other two of the Casablanca Trio – alongside a smaller-than-usual mural by Chaïba Tallal, an opposite-of-Casablanca artist, and lesser-known than her contemporaries.
Over four rooms, the Barjeel Art Foundation presents a ‘historical trajectory’ of the Arab World, ‘from the echoes of the colonial era to the present epoch’ – and one that is gender-balanced. But the works within them move back and forth in time, blending conventional and contemporary motifs, modern political leaders and medieval religious iconography.
We see how artists differently appropriate Western European modes of modern art production as a means of rejecting colonialism and, later, colonial legacies. But more implicit are the modernities pre-existing in traditional, local art forms. Heavy is the influence of Arabic calligraphy (Hurrafiyah), Maghrebin Amazigh symbolism, and Islamic geometry and shape work, especially in the works of Saloua Choucair and Jewad Selim.
Others reimagine these traditional media and materials: in tapestry, Safia Farhat cuts out – and tugs at - the heartstrings of a young bride. Her textile works are marked ‘painted’; the more political come ‘executed’, like Samir Rafi’s lacquering of oil paint directly onto rugs, carpets, and burlap.
Sculptures deploy found objects from the local environment, from Abdul Hay Mosallam Zarara’s colourful sawdust rocket launch to Vera Tamari’s intimate ceramic reliefs of Palestinian women at work. More critical are the tiny bronzes and porcelain biscuits of Mona Hatoum; born into a Palestinian family in exile in Lebanon, she reproduces a monument in Beirut, shot with bullets since the civil war.
Aref el Rayess abstracts the country’s desert landscapes. In his Cairo ‘Hôtel des Rois (Hotel of the Kings)’ (1950), Hamed Abdalla remodels the cut-outs of Henri Matisse in paint. Indeed, there are few stereotypical bustling market scenes and bountiful fruit trees to be found here. Opposite both sit works in soft pinks, with suggestive orifices, heavily erotic works which similarly destroy simplistic ideas of modesty attached to the region.
Experiments in cubism further highlight these artists’ imaginative engagement with their European contemporaries. Crazy horses – which rampage in the works of Pablo Picasso, and the post-war Cobra artists – crop up in the works of Kadhim Hayder, Naziha Salim, and Jumana El Husseini. Mohamed Ghani Hiikmat’s ‘Gateway to the West’ (1975-1976), a colossal, carved wooden door, hints at migrations both creative and practical. It gazes across the hall to a work by Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, the Sudanese icon who once studied in London.
Captions – clad scantily with context – still imply transnational solidarities, in how artists have travelled across the oft-homogenised ‘Arab World’. Baya, an Algerian painter who practised in Paris, is one of many to present works with French language titles, exposing the historic and continued cultural legacies of empires. Her figurative brushwork sits alongside a plurality of women, whether Nubian family portraits, or Ezekiel Baroukh’s more conventionally European, and light-skinned, subjects.
Mounirah Mosly’s veiled monoliths and moai stand cloaked in secrecy. More ambiguous are Marwan’s covered faces, which encourage enquiry into the nature of his migration from Damascus in Syria to Berlin. (Here too, how Mahmoud Sabri arrived in Maidenhead from Baghdad; another instance where a caption could have helped.) His abstraction gets more explicit in the final room, with a large face which becomes visible only when we take a step back.
The politics – on modernism and nation building – comes more explicitly too in the room captioned with the names of arrested artists, and familiars, like Fahrelnissa Zeid and Dia Al-Azzawi. It’s also characterised by works curated in contrast; Leila Nseir’s pale, individual sacrifice, next to the boldly coloured ‘Palestine’ (1998), by Abdulhalim Radwi.
Stocky, solid figures suggest connections with the traditions of Mexican muralism; yet, according to Fatma Arargi, even a revolutionary must stop for lunch. We can only speculate, without words. Still, the great strength in this almost-gallery-hang is that the great diversity of works seen on a single wall – in media, scale, subject, and location – implicitly reflects the great diversity of the region.
Perhaps a commercial space like Christie’s is best placed to display works in this fashion. Yet its imposing staircase and rich blue walls may betray the fact this exhibition is free to access. (‘Is there anything I can buy?’, a refrain oft overheard, and always met with disappointment when a buyer hears the works are only on loan.) But we must encourage more of these public exhibitions, and gaze at them whilst we can. Kawkaba is a rare opportunity to see so many of these stars.
Kawkaba: Highlights from the Barjeel Art Foundation is on view at Christie’s London until 23 August 2023, as part of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Kawkaba takes its meaning, constellation, quite literally; it’s a symbol of connections, but also of modernity, something typically stereotyped out of West Asia and North Africa. And so it starts with space - Abdel Hadi el Gazzar’s two Arabic astronauts, Menhat Helmy’s cosmic map of the universe, and Mohamed Melehi, looking more towards The Dark Side of Moon.
Instantly recognisable, Melehi’s works join many more in this greatest-hits exhibition of modern and contemporary Arab art. We find Farid Belkahia and Mohamed Chabâa – the other two of the Casablanca Trio – alongside a smaller-than-usual mural by Chaïba Tallal, an opposite-of-Casablanca artist, and lesser-known than her contemporaries.
Over four rooms, the Barjeel Art Foundation presents a ‘historical trajectory’ of the Arab World, ‘from the echoes of the colonial era to the present epoch’ – and one that is gender-balanced. But the works within them move back and forth in time, blending conventional and contemporary motifs, modern political leaders and medieval religious iconography.
We see how artists differently appropriate Western European modes of modern art production as a means of rejecting colonialism and, later, colonial legacies. But more implicit are the modernities pre-existing in traditional, local art forms. Heavy is the influence of Arabic calligraphy (Hurrafiyah), Maghrebin Amazigh symbolism, and Islamic geometry and shape work, especially in the works of Saloua Choucair and Jewad Selim.
Others reimagine these traditional media and materials: in tapestry, Safia Farhat cuts out – and tugs at - the heartstrings of a young bride. Her textile works are marked ‘painted’; the more political come ‘executed’, like Samir Rafi’s lacquering of oil paint directly onto rugs, carpets, and burlap.
Sculptures deploy found objects from the local environment, from Abdul Hay Mosallam Zarara’s colourful sawdust rocket launch to Vera Tamari’s intimate ceramic reliefs of Palestinian women at work. More critical are the tiny bronzes and porcelain biscuits of Mona Hatoum; born into a Palestinian family in exile in Lebanon, she reproduces a monument in Beirut, shot with bullets since the civil war.
Aref el Rayess abstracts the country’s desert landscapes. In his Cairo ‘Hôtel des Rois (Hotel of the Kings)’ (1950), Hamed Abdalla remodels the cut-outs of Henri Matisse in paint. Indeed, there are few stereotypical bustling market scenes and bountiful fruit trees to be found here. Opposite both sit works in soft pinks, with suggestive orifices, heavily erotic works which similarly destroy simplistic ideas of modesty attached to the region.
Experiments in cubism further highlight these artists’ imaginative engagement with their European contemporaries. Crazy horses – which rampage in the works of Pablo Picasso, and the post-war Cobra artists – crop up in the works of Kadhim Hayder, Naziha Salim, and Jumana El Husseini. Mohamed Ghani Hiikmat’s ‘Gateway to the West’ (1975-1976), a colossal, carved wooden door, hints at migrations both creative and practical. It gazes across the hall to a work by Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, the Sudanese icon who once studied in London.
Captions – clad scantily with context – still imply transnational solidarities, in how artists have travelled across the oft-homogenised ‘Arab World’. Baya, an Algerian painter who practised in Paris, is one of many to present works with French language titles, exposing the historic and continued cultural legacies of empires. Her figurative brushwork sits alongside a plurality of women, whether Nubian family portraits, or Ezekiel Baroukh’s more conventionally European, and light-skinned, subjects.
Mounirah Mosly’s veiled monoliths and moai stand cloaked in secrecy. More ambiguous are Marwan’s covered faces, which encourage enquiry into the nature of his migration from Damascus in Syria to Berlin. (Here too, how Mahmoud Sabri arrived in Maidenhead from Baghdad; another instance where a caption could have helped.) His abstraction gets more explicit in the final room, with a large face which becomes visible only when we take a step back.
The politics – on modernism and nation building – comes more explicitly too in the room captioned with the names of arrested artists, and familiars, like Fahrelnissa Zeid and Dia Al-Azzawi. It’s also characterised by works curated in contrast; Leila Nseir’s pale, individual sacrifice, next to the boldly coloured ‘Palestine’ (1998), by Abdulhalim Radwi.
Stocky, solid figures suggest connections with the traditions of Mexican muralism; yet, according to Fatma Arargi, even a revolutionary must stop for lunch. We can only speculate, without words. Still, the great strength in this almost-gallery-hang is that the great diversity of works seen on a single wall – in media, scale, subject, and location – implicitly reflects the great diversity of the region.
Perhaps a commercial space like Christie’s is best placed to display works in this fashion. Yet its imposing staircase and rich blue walls may betray the fact this exhibition is free to access. (‘Is there anything I can buy?’, a refrain oft overheard, and always met with disappointment when a buyer hears the works are only on loan.) But we must encourage more of these public exhibitions, and gaze at them whilst we can. Kawkaba is a rare opportunity to see so many of these stars.
Kawkaba: Highlights from the Barjeel Art Foundation is on view at Christie’s London until 23 August 2023, as part of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Kawkaba takes its meaning, constellation, quite literally; it’s a symbol of connections, but also of modernity, something typically stereotyped out of West Asia and North Africa. And so it starts with space - Abdel Hadi el Gazzar’s two Arabic astronauts, Menhat Helmy’s cosmic map of the universe, and Mohamed Melehi, looking more towards The Dark Side of Moon.
Instantly recognisable, Melehi’s works join many more in this greatest-hits exhibition of modern and contemporary Arab art. We find Farid Belkahia and Mohamed Chabâa – the other two of the Casablanca Trio – alongside a smaller-than-usual mural by Chaïba Tallal, an opposite-of-Casablanca artist, and lesser-known than her contemporaries.
Over four rooms, the Barjeel Art Foundation presents a ‘historical trajectory’ of the Arab World, ‘from the echoes of the colonial era to the present epoch’ – and one that is gender-balanced. But the works within them move back and forth in time, blending conventional and contemporary motifs, modern political leaders and medieval religious iconography.
We see how artists differently appropriate Western European modes of modern art production as a means of rejecting colonialism and, later, colonial legacies. But more implicit are the modernities pre-existing in traditional, local art forms. Heavy is the influence of Arabic calligraphy (Hurrafiyah), Maghrebin Amazigh symbolism, and Islamic geometry and shape work, especially in the works of Saloua Choucair and Jewad Selim.
Others reimagine these traditional media and materials: in tapestry, Safia Farhat cuts out – and tugs at - the heartstrings of a young bride. Her textile works are marked ‘painted’; the more political come ‘executed’, like Samir Rafi’s lacquering of oil paint directly onto rugs, carpets, and burlap.
Sculptures deploy found objects from the local environment, from Abdul Hay Mosallam Zarara’s colourful sawdust rocket launch to Vera Tamari’s intimate ceramic reliefs of Palestinian women at work. More critical are the tiny bronzes and porcelain biscuits of Mona Hatoum; born into a Palestinian family in exile in Lebanon, she reproduces a monument in Beirut, shot with bullets since the civil war.
Aref el Rayess abstracts the country’s desert landscapes. In his Cairo ‘Hôtel des Rois (Hotel of the Kings)’ (1950), Hamed Abdalla remodels the cut-outs of Henri Matisse in paint. Indeed, there are few stereotypical bustling market scenes and bountiful fruit trees to be found here. Opposite both sit works in soft pinks, with suggestive orifices, heavily erotic works which similarly destroy simplistic ideas of modesty attached to the region.
Experiments in cubism further highlight these artists’ imaginative engagement with their European contemporaries. Crazy horses – which rampage in the works of Pablo Picasso, and the post-war Cobra artists – crop up in the works of Kadhim Hayder, Naziha Salim, and Jumana El Husseini. Mohamed Ghani Hiikmat’s ‘Gateway to the West’ (1975-1976), a colossal, carved wooden door, hints at migrations both creative and practical. It gazes across the hall to a work by Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, the Sudanese icon who once studied in London.
Captions – clad scantily with context – still imply transnational solidarities, in how artists have travelled across the oft-homogenised ‘Arab World’. Baya, an Algerian painter who practised in Paris, is one of many to present works with French language titles, exposing the historic and continued cultural legacies of empires. Her figurative brushwork sits alongside a plurality of women, whether Nubian family portraits, or Ezekiel Baroukh’s more conventionally European, and light-skinned, subjects.
Mounirah Mosly’s veiled monoliths and moai stand cloaked in secrecy. More ambiguous are Marwan’s covered faces, which encourage enquiry into the nature of his migration from Damascus in Syria to Berlin. (Here too, how Mahmoud Sabri arrived in Maidenhead from Baghdad; another instance where a caption could have helped.) His abstraction gets more explicit in the final room, with a large face which becomes visible only when we take a step back.
The politics – on modernism and nation building – comes more explicitly too in the room captioned with the names of arrested artists, and familiars, like Fahrelnissa Zeid and Dia Al-Azzawi. It’s also characterised by works curated in contrast; Leila Nseir’s pale, individual sacrifice, next to the boldly coloured ‘Palestine’ (1998), by Abdulhalim Radwi.
Stocky, solid figures suggest connections with the traditions of Mexican muralism; yet, according to Fatma Arargi, even a revolutionary must stop for lunch. We can only speculate, without words. Still, the great strength in this almost-gallery-hang is that the great diversity of works seen on a single wall – in media, scale, subject, and location – implicitly reflects the great diversity of the region.
Perhaps a commercial space like Christie’s is best placed to display works in this fashion. Yet its imposing staircase and rich blue walls may betray the fact this exhibition is free to access. (‘Is there anything I can buy?’, a refrain oft overheard, and always met with disappointment when a buyer hears the works are only on loan.) But we must encourage more of these public exhibitions, and gaze at them whilst we can. Kawkaba is a rare opportunity to see so many of these stars.
Kawkaba: Highlights from the Barjeel Art Foundation is on view at Christie’s London until 23 August 2023, as part of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
Kawkaba takes its meaning, constellation, quite literally; it’s a symbol of connections, but also of modernity, something typically stereotyped out of West Asia and North Africa. And so it starts with space - Abdel Hadi el Gazzar’s two Arabic astronauts, Menhat Helmy’s cosmic map of the universe, and Mohamed Melehi, looking more towards The Dark Side of Moon.
Instantly recognisable, Melehi’s works join many more in this greatest-hits exhibition of modern and contemporary Arab art. We find Farid Belkahia and Mohamed Chabâa – the other two of the Casablanca Trio – alongside a smaller-than-usual mural by Chaïba Tallal, an opposite-of-Casablanca artist, and lesser-known than her contemporaries.
Over four rooms, the Barjeel Art Foundation presents a ‘historical trajectory’ of the Arab World, ‘from the echoes of the colonial era to the present epoch’ – and one that is gender-balanced. But the works within them move back and forth in time, blending conventional and contemporary motifs, modern political leaders and medieval religious iconography.
We see how artists differently appropriate Western European modes of modern art production as a means of rejecting colonialism and, later, colonial legacies. But more implicit are the modernities pre-existing in traditional, local art forms. Heavy is the influence of Arabic calligraphy (Hurrafiyah), Maghrebin Amazigh symbolism, and Islamic geometry and shape work, especially in the works of Saloua Choucair and Jewad Selim.
Others reimagine these traditional media and materials: in tapestry, Safia Farhat cuts out – and tugs at - the heartstrings of a young bride. Her textile works are marked ‘painted’; the more political come ‘executed’, like Samir Rafi’s lacquering of oil paint directly onto rugs, carpets, and burlap.
Sculptures deploy found objects from the local environment, from Abdul Hay Mosallam Zarara’s colourful sawdust rocket launch to Vera Tamari’s intimate ceramic reliefs of Palestinian women at work. More critical are the tiny bronzes and porcelain biscuits of Mona Hatoum; born into a Palestinian family in exile in Lebanon, she reproduces a monument in Beirut, shot with bullets since the civil war.
Aref el Rayess abstracts the country’s desert landscapes. In his Cairo ‘Hôtel des Rois (Hotel of the Kings)’ (1950), Hamed Abdalla remodels the cut-outs of Henri Matisse in paint. Indeed, there are few stereotypical bustling market scenes and bountiful fruit trees to be found here. Opposite both sit works in soft pinks, with suggestive orifices, heavily erotic works which similarly destroy simplistic ideas of modesty attached to the region.
Experiments in cubism further highlight these artists’ imaginative engagement with their European contemporaries. Crazy horses – which rampage in the works of Pablo Picasso, and the post-war Cobra artists – crop up in the works of Kadhim Hayder, Naziha Salim, and Jumana El Husseini. Mohamed Ghani Hiikmat’s ‘Gateway to the West’ (1975-1976), a colossal, carved wooden door, hints at migrations both creative and practical. It gazes across the hall to a work by Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, the Sudanese icon who once studied in London.
Captions – clad scantily with context – still imply transnational solidarities, in how artists have travelled across the oft-homogenised ‘Arab World’. Baya, an Algerian painter who practised in Paris, is one of many to present works with French language titles, exposing the historic and continued cultural legacies of empires. Her figurative brushwork sits alongside a plurality of women, whether Nubian family portraits, or Ezekiel Baroukh’s more conventionally European, and light-skinned, subjects.
Mounirah Mosly’s veiled monoliths and moai stand cloaked in secrecy. More ambiguous are Marwan’s covered faces, which encourage enquiry into the nature of his migration from Damascus in Syria to Berlin. (Here too, how Mahmoud Sabri arrived in Maidenhead from Baghdad; another instance where a caption could have helped.) His abstraction gets more explicit in the final room, with a large face which becomes visible only when we take a step back.
The politics – on modernism and nation building – comes more explicitly too in the room captioned with the names of arrested artists, and familiars, like Fahrelnissa Zeid and Dia Al-Azzawi. It’s also characterised by works curated in contrast; Leila Nseir’s pale, individual sacrifice, next to the boldly coloured ‘Palestine’ (1998), by Abdulhalim Radwi.
Stocky, solid figures suggest connections with the traditions of Mexican muralism; yet, according to Fatma Arargi, even a revolutionary must stop for lunch. We can only speculate, without words. Still, the great strength in this almost-gallery-hang is that the great diversity of works seen on a single wall – in media, scale, subject, and location – implicitly reflects the great diversity of the region.
Perhaps a commercial space like Christie’s is best placed to display works in this fashion. Yet its imposing staircase and rich blue walls may betray the fact this exhibition is free to access. (‘Is there anything I can buy?’, a refrain oft overheard, and always met with disappointment when a buyer hears the works are only on loan.) But we must encourage more of these public exhibitions, and gaze at them whilst we can. Kawkaba is a rare opportunity to see so many of these stars.
Kawkaba: Highlights from the Barjeel Art Foundation is on view at Christie’s London until 23 August 2023, as part of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
