“This is the first series of works that contain no figures. But yet there is a figure – the reflection of the person standing before the mirror.” Nadine Hammam
Nadine Hammam opens her fourth solo show asking WHY. Through the exploration of the multidimensional and multi-layered word ‘why,’ taken here both as a linguistic sign and as an artistic object, she offers no answers. Embracing the ultimate cliché of ‘love’, she uses broken mirrors to deconstruct the signification of words and displaces them within new contexts of signification. What initially appears as an unassuming deconstruction of ‘what is broken can’t be fixed’ is resituated to question the status of the ‘other.’ She deliberately places her audience in the midst of the work, mirroring, reflecting, fragmenting and refracting new possibilities. The traditionally assigned meaning of language is called into question: DESIRE, LUST, KISS, PASSION, LOVE, FOREVER, YES are carefully reconstructed, subtly and ornately. Multi-layered canvases become the locale or centerpiece of intricate and often complex, multi-faceted stories behind relationships and histories. This poetic gesture calls all into question: WHY.
NADINE HAMMAM was born in 1973 in Cairo, Egypt and lives and works in Cairo. She received a BA English and Comparative Literature from the American University in Cairo and an MA in Fine Art from Central St. Martins, London. A multi-disciplinary and conceptual artist, she works with painting, writing, sound installations, and video. She deconstructs gender dynamics and social taboos by investigating the relationship between the public versus the private, the external versus the internal, and the intimate, which are key to Middle Eastern society. A transnational artist, her painting explores text and image and constructs flawless multi-layered canvases that eliminate all visible brush strokes pointing to the gestural disappearance of the artist. Her work is now positioned on the international artistic scene. She has exhibited her work in Cairo (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013), London (2006), Dubai (2007, 2011), Washington DC (2005) and Paris (2005).