We are delighted to return for artgenève 2024, featuring works by Samia Halaby, Safwan Dahoul, Kais Salman and Sama Alshaibi, along with snippets from Sadik Kwaish Alfraji’s works showcased in the previous fair edition.
Sadik Kwaish Alfraji’s unique paperworks created in black Indian ink will be on display. The artist finds black intensifies expressive power and imparts a timeless quality. The work is an evolving black and white drawing that depicts the story of Alfraji’s life in Iraq and his subsequent displacement as a visualised stream of consciousness. Despite its personal origin, Alfraji’s project transcends geopolitical boundaries, evolving into a universal quest for hope.
Samia Halaby’s artworks blend bold impulsiveness with careful deliberation. The interplay between hard-edged abstraction and softer painterly elements mirrors the intricate fusion of nature’s complex forms with mankind’s geometric abstraction, resulting in visually striking combinations.
In contrast, Safwan Dahoul brings a melancholic minimalism to the show. His Dream series featuring double portrait, explores the physical and psychological effects of alienation and solitude. One portrait gazes into the void and swallows us through the darkness, while the other shuts itself from the world and presents a withdrawn self. Embracing the beauty, chaos, and nuances of dreams, Dahoul’s art reflects on their profound nature.
Kais Salman presents his latest works, a continuation of the Fables in the Unknown series, delving further into abstraction. Illustrating the pros and cons of civilization and the chaos of the human condition, Salman juxtaposes evil with good, creating multiple narratives simultaneously, and constructing a specific scenography. The dark satirical humor serves to illuminate reality and envision a better world.
Finally, Sama Alshaibi’s artworks from Carry Over and Affiche series, alludes to the ‘Oriental’ portrait photographs of the region’s women made by Western photographers in the late 19th and early 20th century. Produced through historic printing processes of the era, the artworks depict the female subject carrying sculptural vessels over her head, fashioned as headdresses. Alshaibi interrogates objects rampant throughout the genre of Orientalist portrait photography, that have aided a Western gaze. Alshaibi critiques the social exploitation generated over a century of images of Middle Eastern women, disrupting the paradigm through a strategy of assigning power through the female body and narration of her stage.
