This year’s summer-long show exclusively features contemporary names beginning with the highlights of our 2021-22 season, and accompanied by others whose art we believe deserves a chance to shine. “Collage” brings together some of Egypt’s most celebrated living and up-and-coming talents, headlined by a selection of our valued resident artists.
Safarkhan capped off yet another exhilarating season filled with fresh surprises and crowd favorites across some of Egypt’s most promising and established contemporary talents, we also enjoyed a noteworthy showing of some of the country’s most renowned masters, in our special Pioneer Revival, which was surely a memorable one for those who experienced it in person. As we head into the summer months, we have curated an eclectic off-season collection, which will be opening June 7 and showing through September 14. This year’s summer-long show exclusively features contemporary names beginning with the highlights of our 2021-22 season, and accompanied by others whose art we believe deserves a chance to shine. “Collage” brings together some of Egypt’s most celebrated living and up-and-coming talents, headlined by a selection of our valued resident artists.
Chief amongst this exciting crop and needing no introduction, we have Mohamed Abla and Ahmed Farid, without question the country’s preeminent figurative and abstract artists respectively in terms of acumen and esteem. We are also featuring our young stars in the form of Ibrahim Khatab and Ahmed Saber, both of whom enjoyed their most stellar exhibitions this season for us, sending ripples not only across the nation but now regionally, as their powerful work warrants. Karim Abd Elmalak completes this contingent, with his new works serving as a preview of what’s to come from him in his exhibition with us next season. Whilst the aforementioned are all household names in their own right, we were so proud to provide a platform for the first time to Neama El Sanhoury and Amal Nasr, both established and respected women artists whose work enthralled us. The former with her innovative fabric applique technique combining diverse elements like wood, textiles, paint and more in astonishing tapestries, while the latter in her cultured brand of abstract-figurative painting, brings to life a pantheon of multi-civilizational deities, characters, myths and legends in a style reminiscent of the late pioneers.
Works from lesser-established fledgling talents such as Kinda Adly and Tasneem El Meshad are present, both of whom kicked off our season. They exemplify the future of Egypt’s contemporary women artists, Adly’s gleefully vibrant pop-art assemblages, and El Meshad’s thoughtful reinterpretation of cubism and geometric abstraction, which she uses to explore the universal trials and tribulations of life. Lastly, to round off this year’s summer collection are works from a few popular names to serve as a welcome preview of what is to come from them in the near future. Katherine Bakhoum, Ahmed Gaafary and Ashraf Zamzami, will each be exhibiting with us either the following season or the next. Gaafary’s bold abstract painting captivates as much as confounds, with its mysterious shapes and figures as though originating from another planet. In stark contrast, Bakhoum’s traditional orientalist oeuvre offers an entirely different form of painting, one that has earned her legions of admirers across the world, and which we are sure will astound again in her upcoming exhibition. Any contemporary art collection at Safarkhan is not complete without the genius of Zamzami, whose art these days is as rare as it is incomparable in its exquisite naïve art brut style, of which we can only hope to unveil more of soon.
