"Sabah Naim : Solo Exhibition"
2009-04-26 until 2009-05-20
Townhouse Gallery / Factory Space
Cairo, , EG Egypt

Sabah Naim’s third solo exhibition at Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, her largest show in Egypt in several years, will take place in both the first-floor gallery and the factory space from April 26 through May 20, 2009. The artist will present recent work produced in London and Cairo, including a short video. Naim photographs people as they move through public space: walking down the street, relaxing in the park, sitting on the metro.

Visitors at a museum are captured as they take break on benches—paused spectators turned spectacle. As in her earlier work, Naim enlarges her snapshots, xeroxing or printing them on canvas, and then paints and draws over the black-and-white images. Playing with figure and ground, she alternately highlights or obscures the protagonists in her portraits. The intervention of her hand does not individuate but instead adds another layer of noise in the city, another mask for these faces in the crowd.

In this exhibition, Naim introduces embroidery to her work, pushing her images into three dimensions. Combining photography with handpainted motifs, covering young men in sloganed t-shirts with stitched appliqués, Naim questions binaries such as contemporary and traditional, masculine and feminine, fine art and craft.

Sabah Naim lives and works in Cairo, where she is a professor at the College of Art Education. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at B21 Gallery in Dubai and Galleria Lia Rumma in Naples as well as the traveling group shows “Africa Remix” and “Word into Art.”

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for Egypt

Other Important Exhibitions in Egypt