Fann À Porter is pleased to announce our first participation at Abu Dhabi Art. The booth creates an intricate dialogue between the works of Ahmad Kasha, Majd Kurdieh, Rabee Kiwan, and Khaled Jarada as they explore material explorations, themes of humanity, displacement, and hopefulness.
Ahmad Kasha’s (b. 1997, Syria) expressively abstract works mark an integral shift from expressionism. While his older works are embedded with a raw and vivid display of emotion, spark a visceral experience in the viewer, his recent series form compositions that are brimmed with symbolic gestures and references to art history, philosophy, and mythology.
Rabee Kiwan’s (b.1984, Syria) works continue the artist’s exploration of the myriad emotions a human face express. Kiwan’s inherent technique is ever-present in these ceramic works, where the artist masterfully presents the fusion of external influences and internal memory, giving life to the vases and plates through his material application. The faces and bodies are captured in fleeting moments of raw emotion, and encapsulate the essence of existence, inviting introspection into existential quandaries while evoking an array of sentiments.
Majd Kurdieh (b. 1985, Syria) continues his Fasaeen narrative in his new works from the Butterflies series. The artist’s whimsical approach to the ever-present political situations in the Middle East offers a strong moral and positive reinforcement that the artist projects into the world. Incorporating poetry, references to art history as well as our collective history, and strong story-telling techniques, Kurdieh’s characters continue to narrate tales that could apply to any viewer, leaving room for personal interpretation.
Khaled Jarada’s (b. 1996, Palestine) works are compositions captured in medias res. His figures appear imbalanced, anxious, and out of place. The in-betweenness in these works is not only temporal. Rather, they are also spatial. Jarada started his exploration into the discomfort of in-betweenness as he himself became out of place in exile. The artist refutes rigid hierarchies by elevating these devalued and mundane moments, places, objects, and figures to become worthy of display, appreciation, and idealization.
