On November 12, Ayyam Gallery Damascus will proudly present Impulses, the solo exhibition of Jordanian artist Hilda Hiary. Signaling the artist’s first one-person show in Syria, this forthcoming event will showcase a new series of works that have been inspired by recent political upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa. Taking the vantage point of what she describes as a “witness of this era,” Hiary presents over a dozen new paintings in which figures become templates for raw emotion as they are suspended in non-descript settings that allude to both interior and exterior spaces, or private verses public realms.
Resulting from a visceral sense of expression, these recent canvases are testimonies to the artist’s own reactions to the formidable events of the past year as the Arab world has been forced to entered a new phase in its modern history. In much of Hiary’s work, these changes are captured by outlines of the female body in the form of many incarnations: as a mother, as a young woman who sneaks away to meet her lover, as a screaming prisoner, as a muffled Egyptian songstress Oum Kalthoum.