Ashraf El Zamzami | MENART 2026 | 'Where Is Home?'

Safarkhan is proud to present one of our longest standing marquee contemporary talents, Ashraf El Zamzami, in this edition of MENART Fair's 'Revealing' section, as we bring his thought-provoking brand of art brut expressionism to a European audience for the very first time in this capacity. This mini-collection of works represents some of the most accomplished works of portraiture produced by the artist over the past two years, and each in isolation, as well as all in unison, are profoundly emblematic of El Zamzami's ethereal world, brimming with the limitless possibility and emotive aura of a gifted imagination. His art is untethered from any form or construct, real or imagined, and thus his painting is an out of the ordinary experience that speaks to the very innermost reaches of our psyches. Zamzami’s art is born out of an ever-present duality wrestling perpetually inside his persona, this divergence of tortured individualism and spirited, almost childlike optimism, are homogenized into a painter’s mind that is in every manner of the word, genius.

El Zamzami’s painting is in its own class amongst Egyptian contemporary art, with Safarkhan founder Sherwet Shafei declaring him with her expert eye the country’s foremost contemporary figurative artist before his 2020 exhibition ‘Solitude’, which marked a sensational return to form after a lengthy hiatus. The works in this collection demonstrate some of the defining features of Zamzami's art; striking semi-abstracted figures and visages with the most emotive expressions and poses, highly textured and worked backgrounds replete with irregular patterns and the artist's characteristic block segmented composition, and ultimately in each work either a direct or abstract message to ruminate over - sometimes revealed and other times left concealed, partially obscure or open-ended for the viewer to extrapolate on. It is this enigmatic quality that we can at least always be certain of when it comes to witnessing Zamzami’s art. It is a brand of painting that is not to merely be enjoyed or experienced, but rather one that is to be continually interpreted, ruminated over and wrestled with – and that to us is undoubtedly the pinnacle of artistic achievement and purpose.