Working from detailed sketches in a painterly expressionist style that is primarily applied to figurative subject matter, Noor Bahjat skillfully transitions between warm and cool palettes, in addition to detailed line work and saturated washes of paint, creating deeply atmospheric compositions. Influenced by postwar artists such as Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud, she captures the most inane of human actions, and elevates them to deeply compelling, intimate portrayals by focusing on the body as it seemingly undergoes transformation within the confined space of the composition.

Born in Damascus, Syria in 1991, Noor Bahjat now lives and works in the United Arab Emirates. Bahjat recently graduated at the top of her class from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus. As Ayyam Gallery’s first young artist in residence, she has worked under the mentorship of Tammam Azzam and Mohannad Orabi, who maintain studios at the Dubai flagship of the international art space. Bahjat’s forthcoming exhibition at Ayyam Gallery Al Quoz will feature a selection of works produced during the residency. Although active in the Damascus art scene before arriving in Dubai, the exhibition will serve as her first solo venture. 

Echoing Samir Al Safadi’s earlier works with a heightened sense of desolation, perceptible through the protagonists’ vacant expressions and the gloomy shades of their surroundings, a new composition sees the inclusion of musical instruments, transforming the artist’s melancholic characters into an improvised orchestra. The almost audible, tormented musicality exuding from Al Safadi’s canvas imparts sentiments of grief, solitude, and isolation, which the artist associates with ostracised Syrians living in the occupied Golan Heights. The spatial void surrounding them accentuates an escalating tension, ubiquitous in Al Safadi’s paintings, while emphasising its characters. Through the absence of titles, the artist prompts an intimate dialogue with the viewer, encouraging an examination of the emotional output that is visible in each artwork.

Born in Majdal Shams, Syria in 1982, Samir Al Safadi graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus in 2007, where he currently teaches art. He is a member of the Fateh Moudarres Centre in his native town and holds a position within the Syrian Fine Art Union. Al Safadi’s work has been widely exhibited across Syria since 2002, notably at the Goethe Institute in Damascus. He has participated in various international group shows, most recently in Qatar, Italy, and Yemen. 

Azad Heme’s recent series of cockfight paintings have been showcased in Syria with much acclaim. Utilising the primordial nature of this act as a point of departure for the exploration of human conflict, the artist captures the mythical dichotomy of good and evil, suspending his compositions in moments of tranquility and chaos with philosophical underpinnings. Inspired by the rural environment of his birthplace, he employs a muted palette of earth tones that works to accentuate the abrupt movements of his elegant albeit doomed subjects.

Born in Qamishli, Syria in 1979 to a Kurdish family, Azad Heme graduated from the Adham Ismail Institute of Fine Arts in 2003. Since then, he has participated in exhibitions and workshops throughout Syria, Iraq, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. In 2011, his paintings were featured at the Paris Museum of Modern Art. Heme has been honoured by art organisations in Saudi Arabia, Istanbul, and Canada. His work is housed in collections in the Middle East, Europe, and North America. 

Often informed by his concurrent work as a writer, Ali Abdel Mohsen’s artistic practice includes painting, drawing, animation, and video art as he charts the rapid decline of Egypt in recent years. Rendering his paintings and drawings on cardboard, he appropriates this disposable object as a primary medium, creating an unsettling representation of the deterioration of Egyptian society. Spotlighting the political, social, and cultural issues that arise in his writings, Abdel Mohsen approaches his paintings and drawings with the objectivity of a journalist and the reflective focus of an artist.

The featured lot belongs to Abdel Mohsen’s This is a Dream Come True series, a body of work that explores the significance of architectural landmarks or urban centres in the contested spaces of precarious political settings. Debuted at Cairo’s Mashrabia Gallery in 2013, the series incorporates elements of science fiction, the aesthetic of graphic novels, and cinematic conceptions of space with vast cityscapes or landscapes that appear to swallow inhabitants. This is a Dream Come True was created as a continuous narrative across several acrylic and ink paintings, as the artist simultaneously worked on each cardboard panel, allowing him to track his dystopian tale as it unfolds with the actions of recurring characters.

Born in Egypt in 1984, Ali Abdel Mohsen currently lives and works in Cairo. A self-taught artist, he has exhibited with art spaces in Egypt, including two solo shows at Mashrabia Gallery, and features in the international group show The Bridge, which is travelling to various venues in the United States and Europe.

Abdel Mohsen’s writings have appeared in Al Arabiya, Mada Masr, Harper’s, and Egypt Independent. 

In his expressive and multilayered works, Alireza Adambakan references the iconic imagery and recurring narratives that shaped his religious upbringing in Iran, pinpointing the ways in which such cultural facets are absorbed into the collective unconscious through visual, literary, and oral traditions. Throughout his robust oeuvre, Alireza Adambakan references these motifs as they are confronted with the growth of a society that has rapidly developed in step with the modern world, a struggle between evolving social attitudes and centuries-old theocracy described in abstracted forms.

In the featured lot, the artist alludes to the notion of Paradise in Islam, which is outlined as a place for believers in the afterlife where their good deeds are rewarded by the bestowment of ideal and pure companions. As brushmarks partially obscure the artist’s figures and seas of colour blanket areas of the canvas, Adambakan alludes to an immaterial, yet powerful force that threatens to overwhelm his figures.

Born in Iran in 1976, Alireza Adambakan obtained a Bachelor of Art in Painting from Tehran’s Azad University. Since first exhibiting his work in 2002, he has been featured in over fifty local and international exhibitions. Considered one of Iran’s leading mid-career artists, Adambakan also works as an arts researcher and writer for art magazines. 

n his large-scale mixed-media works, Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik transforms unconventional materials such as charcoal, plaster, starch, ash, and burlap into evocative media that reproduce the patina of imbued surfaces. Basing his ‘combine paintings’ on the weathered layers of graffiti, markings, and cracks that can be found on the exterior surfaces of public spaces, he seeks to explore how such understated facets can serve as records of the oscillation of society over time. Replicating the outer textures, colours, and shapes of deteriorating facades, Majdal Al-Beik excavates the buried traces of past lives, passages that situate cities as reluctant witnesses.

With the start of the war in Syria, Majdal Al-Beik’s practice has reflected greater usage of assemblage through the addition of found objects such as small crosses, fabric strips, string, guns, and knives in order to communicate the stark circumstances of life under conflict. His more recent works include a series of conceptual sculptures and installations alongside paintings and photographs as part of the larger series Postponed Democracy (2014).

Born in a small village on the outskirts of Al-Hasakah, Syria in 1973, Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik trained at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus. His works are housed in public and private collections throughout the Middle East and Europe, and he has been the recipient of several awards, including from the Latakia Biennale and the Shabab Ayyam competition for emerging artists. Selected solo and group exhibitions include Sorbonne Nouvelle, France (2015); Ayyam Gallery London, UK (2014); Ayyam Gallery Al Quoz, UAE (2014); Ayyam Gallery DIFC, UAE (2014, 2013); Ayyam Projects, Lebanon (2014); Ayyam Gallery Beirut, Lebanon (2014, 2012); Ayyam Gallery Damascus, Syria (2008); the National Museum of Aleppo, Syria (2006); Tehran Biennale for Art in the Islamic World, Iran (2005); UNESCO Palace, Beirut, Lebanon (2001); and the British Council, Damascus, Syria (2000). 

Farzad Kohan’s sculptures and paintings explore themes such as love, migration, and identity, and often incorporate appropriated media and found objects. Partially inspired by his personal history and surroundings, Kohan places an emphasis on form, allowing the successive stages of art making to become analogous to diasporic experience, as diverse, sometimes opposing, elements are sampled, brought together, and accumulated. These visible stages are integral parts of each finalised work. Kohan’s formalistic process is revealed, for example, as he layers then strips his abstract works through painting, collage, décollage, and sanding, creating built-up yet weathered surfaces that are at once chaotic and methodical. Allusions to the passage of time, gradual transformations, and hidden narratives are found in the tactile details of his treated panels.

Alongside his sculptures and paintings, Kohan has experimented with installation, and also maintains a large body of works on paper that he expands on a daily basis. Although Kohan’s ink drawings reflect similar themes, their figures signal a representational departure for the artist, as the thin, black outline of a recurring man is delicately rendered and accentuated with Persian letters and numbers in addition to other enigmatic symbols.

Born in Tehran, Iran in 1967, Farzad Kohan lives and works in Los Angeles, California, where he first trained as a sculptor in the late 1990s. Kohan has held solo exhibitions at Ayyam Gallery Dubai, DIFC (2013) and Seyhoun Gallery, Los Angeles (2006). Selected group exhibitions for the artist include ABRA Gallery, Los Angeles (2011); Human Rights Awareness Tour, USA (2008); J Ferrari Gallery, Los Angeles (2008); Eagle Rock Center for the Arts (2008); and Phantom Galleries, Los Angeles (2007). 

abib Farajabadi represents a new generation of Iranian abstract painters who invite postmodern influences and elements of contemporary visual culture, such as graffiti or street art, to mingle with the traditional motifs of Islamic art, liberating the fluidity of calligraphy or the angularity of geometric designs. Inspired by Antoni Tapies and the Tachisme movement to which the Catalan painter largely contributed, Farajabadi deconstructs Persian text to its simplest form, as if dissecting the components of his own identity, allowing colour and brushwork to serve as the central directives of his composition. In so doing, Farajabadi creates dynamic, non- objective arrangements in which the search for creative freedom becomes the primary source of inspiration. To the monochromatic compositions that dominated his earlier canvases, he injects a variety of tantalising hues appearing in various shapes and lines, all while subtracting premeditated brushstrokes.

Born in Shahrood, Iran in 1982, Habib Farajabadi lives and works in Tehran. A self-taught artist, Farajabadi has extensively exhibited in and out of Iran, most notably at the Norrbottens Museum, Sweden (2009); Gallery Rotor2 in Oslo, Sweden (2010); Homa Art Gallery, Tehran, Iran (2012, 2011); and Galerie Kashya Hildebrand, Zurich, Switzerland (2012). 

Azadeh Ghotbi’s work explores concepts of destruction and renewal as formal gestures representing the tenacity and heightened sense of awareness that is often developed in response to the complexities of exile. Ghotbi begins by cutting fully executed compositions into strips of canvas that are then assembled as a new artwork. Certain sections of the painting overlap as they are reconfigured, creating partially obscured areas that allude to the hidden lives of the displaced and the process of cultural assimilation. The resulting work is fragmented yet stitched together as an intricate amalgamation of colour, lines, and texture. The intensified dimensionality that is given to the work through reconstruction represents the links among diasporic communities, particularly of Iran, to which the artist belongs.

Born in Tehran, Iran in 1969, Azadeh Ghotbi currently lives in London, United Kingdom. Ghotbi began experimenting with art while pursuing undergraduate studies in the late 1980s although she received degrees in international relations and business administration from Brown University, United States (1991) and INSEAD, France (1994). Ghotbi has exhibited internationally for over a decade, most recently in solo and group shows at Francis Boeske Projects, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2015); Parasol Unit, London, United Kingdom (2015); S Artspace Gallery, New York, United States (2014, 2013); Opera Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2013); and Seyhoun Gallery, Los Angeles, United States (2013). 

Arash Nazari’s playful prints on stainless steel interpret historical figures and paradoxical tales of kings, beauties, and traitors from Persian history with whimsical references to contemporary popular culture. In the artist’s works the aesthetics of Assyrian bas-reliefs, Apadana patterns, Ghaznavi palaces, and Safavid mosques are resurrected as significant traits that accentuate his floating figures.

In the featured lot, a headless heroine resembles the royal subjects of Qajar era portraiture, her body idealised with a regal pose and the costume of a court performer. Nazari juxtaposes this reference to Iran’s artistic heritage by ‘updating’ his protagonist with the trappings of modern life: a plastic children’s puppet and leather high-heeled boots. The artist’s mysterious imagery serves as a form of new iconography, prompting a reconsideration of how history informs the present as viewers are invited to project their own interpretations and cultural references onto the work, arriving at meaning through both subjective and objective experience and memory.

Born in Iran in 1980, Arash Nazari received a degree in Industrial Engineering from Elmo Farhang University, Tehran before his emergence as an artist. Selected group exhibitions for the artist include Scope Basel Miami, USA (2013); Scope Basel, Switzerland (2013); and Salsali Private Museum, Dubai, UAE (2012). Arash Nazari’s most recent solo exhibitions have been held at The Mine, Dubai, UAE (2014); Shirin Art Gallery, Tehran, Iran (2013); and Homa Art Gallery, Tehran, Iran (2011). 

Ehsan Alirezaei’s creative approach is highly influenced by his education in literature and an admiration of classical representations of diverse cultures. For the artist, photo manipulation is a technique that both elaborates a concept and actively delivers a message to a given audience. Shadow (2014), from the series A Thousand Tales, is one piece of an extensive story: a vignette intended to create a bridge between Eastern and Western cultures as an expression of the artist’s identity. In the featured lot, Alirezaei references medieval tapestries, which contain elaborate patterns that border picturesque scenes. The artist substitutes the customary depictions of royalty, warring factions, and mythical tales with the unoccupied interior space of an Islamic structure, a quiet place of contemplation that signals serenity.

Born in 1982 in Shiraz, where he was raised, Ehsan Alirezaei obtained a Bachelor of Art degree in Dramatic Literature from the University of Tehran in 2008, and completed a Master of Art degree in Directing from the Faculty of Cinema and Theatre, University of Tehran in 2015. Since 2008, Alirezaei has participated in solo and group shows in Iran, and has organised various exhibitions at venues such as Boomerang Art Gallery, Tehran, Iran, where he served as curator and director from 2009 to 2011. 

Kaveh Hosseini’s digitally manipulated photographs are permeated with an otherworldly atmosphere, inhabited by common objects and anonymous characters. Displaced, distorted, and seemingly lost in unforgiving environments, Hosseini’s protagonists appear to blend into nothingness. Rather than a lugubrious sentiment of pain and isolation, Hosseini seeks to produce is an ideological sanctuary where mutating perceptions lead us to question the realness of our universe.

Born in Iran in 1982, Kaveh Hosseini studied in Germany, where he lives and works today. He participated in collective exhibitions in the United States and Germany, and received several accolades for his photographs, most notably an Honorable Mention at the International Photography Awards in the United States (2014, 2010). In 2014, Hosseini was a finalist at the Fifth Annual of Contemporary Art—Persbook in Iran. 

Emerging artist Faisal Jehan recently realised his work in physical form after digitally promoting his concepts via social media platforms. With over 3,000 Instagram followers, Jehan claims to have reached ‘the right kind of audience’ from the Arab world: viewers who believe in the progression of the East. As a rising talent among the newly coined ‘Internet Culture,’ Jehan primarily works with digital collage to critique what he perceives as a mass cultural preoccupation towards extremism and authority. Insert Coin (2015) was developed after much deliberation of individual freedom of expression. Through the obscured image of an anonymous ruler, the artist interprets a blurred line of right and wrong within a strict regime.

Born in 1984 in Bahrain, Faisal Jehan is a self-taught artist who creates his work using advanced or primitive programs, such as Adobe Suite and MS Paint, as a therapeutic means of promoting change. In 2015, Jehan participated in a group exhibition titled Double Tap at the Malja Artspace in Bahrain. 

Methodically utilising photography is a necessary approach for artist Yasmeen Farah, as the process of documentation reveals an internal struggle influenced by the concrete structures of her city, Beirut. Metro, from the Beirut’s Skin series, exposes a cultural routine of masking devastation, which the artist describes as ‘an inherent violence mixed with nostalgic joy.’ With these Dada compositions, Farah re-enacts the process of collage as a means of conceptualising the vicious cycle of Beirut’s history of conflict through layers of wallpaper that are ripped apart then glued to the same surfaces. This creative impulse forms an aesthetic that describes the city’s prevailing immunity towards violence, one of its dominant modes of escapism.

Born in France in 1980, Lebanese artist Yasmeen Farah received a degree in Visual Communication from L'Académie Charpentier, Paris, France in 2004. After holding a position as the creative director of Alice Edde since 2011, Farah founded D.a.d.a. (Des Ateliers D’Art) in 2013, where she teaches a wide-range of students interested in art history and painting. Group exhibitions for the artist include Street Talk at Minus 1, Beirut (2013) and Beirut Bloom Contemporary Art Fair (2014). 

Lebanese painter Yasmina Nysten uses a distinctive, multi-perspectival approach in her work, which incorporates elements of abstraction, symbolism, and expressionism, among other stylistic forms. The artist’s recent paintings often depict grotesque figures in which distorted human heads are fused with the bodies of animals or are otherwise fragmented, reflecting an unsettling view of the human condition. In this surrealist untitled work, violence is alluded through the imagery of weapons as a central consecrated figure appears to devour the hearts of the disembodied, a startling comment on the state of world affairs.

Born in Finland in 1988, Yasmina Nysten has lived between Helsinki, Cannes, Beirut, and New York City. Having received a Bachelor of Fine Art degree from ALBA University Beirut (Academie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts) in 2009, and a Master of Fine Arts in Digital Arts: Computer Animation from the Pratt Institute in New York in 2012, she has gone on to participate in several group and solo shows including, Faces (2006) at the American University of Beirut; 100 Artists Exhibition (2009) at Ouchi Gallery, New York; The 7 Minute Special (2009) at the Kleio Projects, New York; Kings of the Impossible (2010) at Kleio Projects, New York; Collective Show (2011) at Studio 49, Bushwick Open Studios, New York; and Galatea (2012) at the Pratt Institute, New York. 

Nouf Al Semari draws from a variety of subjects defining her environment to create expressionist portraits and urban landscapes generously charged with colour. Set under starry skies, liquefying ceilings, or dropped into concrete jungles rendered with a somber palette, Al Semari’s vibrant characters are positioned at the frontal edge of the picture plane, where they narrate the intersections of modern life amidst traditional cultures.

In the featured lot, a lone figure stands in an ambiguous setting where he carries a towering stack of precariously placed parcels. Incorporating collaged fabrics into the compositional scheme of her painting, Al Semari brings to mind notions of domesticity, suggesting that the packages her protagonist carries are in fact metaphoric representations of accumulated experiences.

Nouf Al Semari is a self-taught artist living in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, where she graduated in business and marketing from King Faisal University. Through the Al-Baylasan Society for Fine Arts, she has participated in various international exhibitions, and in 2012 was a resident artist at Abu Dhabi Art Hub. In 2014, Al Semari was awarded first prize by Clyde & Co for their Community Art Project 

In her recent highly reflective figurative paintings, Zain Mahjoub explores the overwhelming sway of social norms in today’s society, namely their allure and the simultaneous feelings of rejection they instigate. Signified in All Signs Point Right and I wish They Did Left (2013 - 2014), these antagonisms transpire through the stylised portrait of a waif-like woman whose red hair and burgundy lips contrast with her strikingly pale skin. Blending with a uniform background of ecru, her clothing is adorned with minuscule white guns, all pointing to the right. She adopts a meditative pose, with eyes shut and nose adorned by a red dot, symbolising an internal struggle between abidance and reluctance.

Of Syrian origin, Zain Mahjoub was born in the United States in 1986. After completing undergraduate studies in science and economics at London’s City University, she relocated to the United Arab Emirates, where she has worked with arts organisations, most recently the Sharjah Art Foundation, all while continuing her artistic practice. 

After several years of abstract experimentation on canvas while living in Iran, Bahareh Navabi turned to figurative drawing, contrasting the thin lines of her masterfully executed black and white portraits to dark masses that surround and often pierce through them. The bizarre protagonists of Navabi’s works are poised between human, animal, and object—dismembered, displaced, and seemingly unfinished, they appear to transform from figuration into abstraction again. Viewed as a collection of surrealist images, they form a visual lineage of Navabi’s introspective research as she deciphers her own unconscious musings.

Bahareh Navabi was born in 1985 in Tehran, Iran where she earned a diploma in graphic arts from Azadegan Arts School. Navabi continued her artistic training with Bachelor and Masters degrees in Fine Arts at Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, France where she currently resides. Her solo exhibitions have been held between both countries, most recently at Dastan Gallery, Tehran (2013); LMD Galerie, Paris (2012); and Mah Art Gallery, Tehran (2007). Navabi has participated in numerous group shows in Iran, France, Austria, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates, most recently with The Mine, Dubai. 

Wadia Boutaba’s work chronicles the lives of women and explores notions of femininity with a critical eye as she describes the intersections of centuries-old culture and the pressure of modern social norms. Drawing from her hybrid identity as a Moroccan-British artist, Boutaba adapts the intricate designs of North African textiles and decorative art as geometric patterns that not only accentuate her figures but also contextualise scenes of everyday life. Although the artist’s playful genre and portraits of women in colorful attire reflect a sense of whimsy, there is an evident melancholy in her work: women are shown as weary mothers or pensive guardians of domestic spaces. This dichotomy of representation is also achieved with emphatic brushstrokes that saturate her canvases and partially obscure radiant colours, a formal tension that details the laden psychic realm occupied by her figures.

Wadia Boutaba was born in 1977 in the United Kingdom, where she continues to live and work. Boutaba received a degree in textile design before returning to her initial interest in fine art in the mid 2000s. She has exhibited her textile work at the Mall Galleries in the United Kingdom, and held her first London solo show at Lahd Gallery in 2012. She has also shown in venues outside of Europe, such as the 2014 Singapore Art Fair. 

Louma Rabah creates colourist compositions that depict the atmospheric facets of landscapes as snapshots of everyday life. Identifying the hues and forms of diverse settings, Rabah seeks the utmost balance of pictorial elements in her paintings, revealing the hidden beauty of her surroundings. In First Snow (2015), a nocturnal scene is punctuated by the glistening radiance of snow-capped mountains and homes. Reducing the outlines of mounds and structures to geometric shapes that seem to rise from the two-dimensional surface of the canvas in a sea of square planes, the artist captures the poetics of unassuming moments, prompting viewers to contemplate the stillness of a quiet night.

Born in 1980 in Lebanon, Louma Rabah currently lives and works in Beirut. Rabah studied fine arts and graphic design at the Lebanese American University (LAU). She has exhibited locally at such venues as Artscape, Hamra (2014); Joanna Seikaly Art Gallery (2014); Al Shaikh Ziad Hall, LAU (2013); and Gallery Alwan, Saifi Village (2011). Rabah has also participated in exhibitions abroad at Noon Art Gallery, Dubai (2015) and Al Bandak Art Gallery, Amman, Jordan (2012). 

Employing washes of colour and delicately executed forms, Mona Moein Ansari’s paintings relate to an interest in offbeat things and characters. For the artist, the part-human caricatures of her paintings are inspired by the emotive signals of people and the objects she regularly encounters. Ansari’s long, thin creatures are frequently outfitted in black and white stripes and appear under the title of ‘puppets,’ a detail that infers a comment on the charades and social posturing of contemporary society.

Mona Moein Ansari was born and raised in Tehran, Iran and currently lives in Dubai. In 2009, she graduated from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, where she studied theatre design for performance. Her work has been widely shown in at the Azadi Museum, Tehran; Palazzo Bufalini Citta Di Castello, Perugia; and the Florence Biennale. 

Morteza Khosravi’s expressionist painting style incorporates vigorous brushwork alternating between shadows and highlights for dramatic effect with a cinematic sense of compositional design. In the Hole series, to which the featured lot belongs, Khosravi brings to mind the nightmarish dungeons of torture prisons as scenes where the sadistic actions of soldiers are visually translated not only in realist depictions but also in abstracted formal details that overwhelm the composition. Partially inspired by the imagery of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, which identified the horror and abjection of fascism and political corruption, and the brooding post-war paintings of Francis Bacon, Khosravi depicts scenes in which unbridled power leads to a collective descent into psychological despondency and violent chaos. The narrative of the series unfolds across several works in which minotaurs torment their human captives and plot their ascent to domination. In Banquet, Khosravi references Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum whose allegorical works present a new take on Baroque painting, often with grim underpinnings.

Born in Iran in 1987, Morteza Khosravi obtained a Bachelor of Fine Art degree in Painting from the Marlik University of Noshahr, Iran (2009). Khosravi lives and works in Tehran, where his paintings have been exhibited at various venues since 2011. Khosravi has participated in exhibitions in Canada and Lebanon, and received accolades for his paintings and drawings at several visual arts festivals in Tehran. 

Drawing heavily from ancient mythology, specifically from Mesopotamian legends, Layla Al Attar was known for enigmatic paintings that depict otherworldly landscapes where a lone figure or a couple evoking the Biblical tale of Adam and Eve often appears in a dark primordial forest. Using a limited palette and dramatic imagery, Al Attar produced compositions that show a startling sense of ominous foreboding, as her withdrawn figures seem to have crossed over into the spirit world.

Born in Baghdad in 1940, Layla Al Attar graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, and was one of Iraq’s leading female artists. In addition to exhibiting world wide, Al Attar was indispensible to the regional art scene during the 1970s and 1980s. In 1985 she led the Baghdad Art Gallery, which was associated with the Ministry of Culture and Information, and became a hub for Iraqi artists. As the director of Iraq’s National Museum of Modern Art for several years, she organized countless exhibitions, including the large-scale Baghdad International Festival, one of the most extensive showings of Arab art in the twentieth century. The artist was killed by a US airstrike on Baghdad in 1993. 

Born in 1918 in Damascus, Syria, Nazem Al Jaafari is the last surviving modernist pioneer of his generation and is considered an innovator of Impressionism in Syrian painting, which reached its height in the 1950s. In the early 1940s he was part of a group of young Syrian artists who were sent to study in Egypt under the French Mandate. After graduating from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo in 1947, he returned to Syria to work as an art teacher in secondary schools and taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus. Despite withdrawing from the mainstream Syrian art scene for decades and seeking other opportunities abroad, exhibiting frequently in South America and Europe, he is recognized for his important contributions to modern Arab aesthetics. Through his early techniques and extensive documentation of Damascus’ Old City, Al Jaafari influenced generations of Syrian artists.

Although Al Jaafari has created an extensive portfolio that is estimated to include up to 7,000 paintings and drawings, his estate has largely stayed in tact, as he has been reluctant to sell his work. Nonetheless, examples of his paintings are found in the National Museum of Damascus and in private collections throughout the Middle East. Recently, his work was featured in public sales at Bohnams Dubai and Ayyam Auctions. 

Although the younger brother of Syrian artist Adham Ismail, Naim was a prominent painter in his own right, reconfiguring the traditional aesthetic of Arab decorative arts with a modernist sensibility, a painting style that became highly influential. For example, Naim’s incorporation of the patterns, geometry, and visual rhythms of local textiles is joined in harmonious, colorist compositions that suggest depth and space with sharp lines and multiple planes, creating an illusionistic impression in which the visual culture of ordinary life is highlighted for its complexity and brought into the realm of fine art. This approach pays homage to the region’s rich aesthetic heritage while seeking to expand its borders.

Born in Antioch, Syria in 1930, Naim Ismail studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Istanbul, graduating in 1953. After pursuing research in the art of medals and frescoes at private institutions in Rome, he eventually returned to Damascus in the late 1950s, where he held a number of influential positions, including the directorship of Fine Arts at the Ministry of Culture, a post he held from 1970 to 1979. Naim’s work is housed in a number of notable collections, including the National Museum of Damascus, the Syrian Ministry of Culture, and the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah. 

A pioneering modernist painter, Fateh Moudarres was a leader of Syrian Expressionism, a loosely defined movement spanning decades. Before travelling to Italy to receive his formal artistic training, Moudarres was active as a self-taught realist painter in northern Syria. At the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, he developed an interest in Surrealism and later returned to his native country to form an individual style that he described as, ‘surrealistic and figurative with a strong element of abstraction.’

Deeply affected by his childhood experiences in the Syrian countryside, Moudarres frequently depicted rural subjects on the margins of society, mining Syria’s history, material culture, and natural environment in the process. Although his compositions often drew from a variety of sources, including mythology, ancient visual culture, icon painting, and symbolism, he intermittently addressed the region’s larger political climate.

The featured lot demonstrates Moudarres’ ability to move effortlessly between abstraction and figuration. Although the portrait of a woman includes a realist depiction, Moudarres incorporates the mythical characters that distinguish his influential style, merging reality with metaphysical imagery informed by Syria’s sociocultural context.

Born in a village on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria, Fateh Moudarres (b.1922, d.1999) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Rome between 1954 and 1960. The year of his graduation he represented Syria at the Venice Biennale alongside painter Louay Kayyali, and later participated in the 1963 San Paulo Biennial, where he was awarded a prize in painting. In 1969 he traveled to France to pursue a graduate degree from the Academy of Fine Arts, Paris. Upon returning to Syria in 1972 he joined the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus, where his twenty-year tenure included an appointment as the institution’s dean. Distinguished throughout his career, he received the Jury Prize at the Cairo Biennial in 1994, and the Decoration of Honor from the Latakia Biennial the following year. His works are housed in the National Museum of Damascus, the Syrian Ministry of Culture, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, and The British Museum, among other public and private collections. 

Recognized as the father of Syrian Impressionism, Nasser Chaura led an illustrious career that traversed several schools of art. After studying oil painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo towards the end of the French Mandate, he emerged as a prominent member of what is now identified as the second generation of pioneers. Among other milestones, Chaura and his colleagues laid the foundation for modern Syrian art by depicting local subject matter.

In 1941 Chaura founded the Atelier Veronese in Damascus, a vital art hub of the period, with painter Mahmoud Hammad; a decade later he established the highly influential Society of Art Lovers with fellow impressionist Michele Kurche. Chaura was the leader of the Impressionist movement until 1964 when he abruptly took up abstraction alongside Hammad. In 1970 he returned to representational art, exploring a new form of realism. The result was a freer approach to landscapes and genre scenes with an emphasis on colour, design, and the essence of forms.

The featured lot displays the manipulation of light and soft palette that defined his impressionist style in the years that followed. The painting’s subject matter, what appears to be the classroom of a rural community, indicates the influence of the social realist school of art in Egypt that was beginning to bud at the time, making its way to Syria via recent graduates of the Faculty of Fine Arts. The curvature of figures whose clothing appears as ample areas of colour that anchor the composition signal the artist’s early interest in fluid, abstracted forms that rely on interactions of colour as effecting details.

Born in Damascus, Syria Nasser Choura (b.1920, d.1992) attended the Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo between 1943 and 1947. Returning to Damascus upon completion of his training, he taught at secondary schools until joining the founding teaching staff of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus in 1960. He served as the institution’s deputy dean from 1970 until his retirement in 1990. His works are housed in the National Museum of Damascus, the Syrian Ministry of Culture, and the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts. 

Reminiscent of the imagery of Italian Neo-Realist cinema, which was popular at the time of his academic training in Rome, pioneering modernist painter Louay Kayyali employed what he described as ‘objective realism’ with quiet fortitude. The influence of Italian art is also noticeable with nods to the father of Symbolism, Giorgio De Chirico, whose flattening of space and usage of lines and shadows can be seen as a significant influence on his painting. In Kayyali’s oeuvre an epic narrative builds as though each successive work is a grand vignette in the spirit of playwright Bertolt Brecht or filmmaker Vittorio De Sica.

Yet Kayyali developed a painting style of his own, boldly addressing the Syrian experience. His icon-inspired portraits are frequently rendered from a vantage point that situated the artist (and viewer) slightly below the subject or at eye level, so that the figure is at all times either equal to or above the position of an outside gaze, an element that elevates the status of the ordinary people he portrays. This groundbreaking method of portraiture is accentuated by images of his protagonists in their everyday settings, speaking to a wide spectrum of the public. His intricate still-lifes and landscapes with understated weighty inferences are equally compelling.

Born in Aleppo, Syria Louay Kayyali (b.1934, d.1978) began painting at the age of eleven. Although his professional artistic career spanned only a short period of time (from 1961 - 1976), he was one of the most important Arab modernists with vast contributions to the advancement of art. After returning from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, he worked as an art instructor at secondary schools in the Syrian capital, and later as a professor of interior design in the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus. With his place in the local art scene established—he had represented Syria in the 1960 Venice Biennale alongside Fateh Moudarres—Kayyali dedicated his life to depicting commonplace subjects, commenting on class struggle and the development of Arab society in the early stages of the post-colonial era. 

Although a pioneer in the expression of local heritage in modern Arab art, Adham Ismail was also one of the first artists to abandon academic realism in painting, utilising areas of flat color to detail fluid forms while drawing inspiration from Arabic calligraphy. Ismail is credited with having created the first modern artwork in Syria, the 1951 masterwork The Porter. Despite the astonishing fact that his professional artistic career only lasted a decade before his abrupt death at the age of forty, Ismail’s influence lived on in the works of his colleagues, who recognised his significant contributions to regional aesthetics.

The featured lot, a 1960 oil painting on canvas, demonstrates the artist’s greater shift towards abstraction in the later stage of his oeuvre as he experimented with a multi-perspective type of figuration. Although employing overlaid planes, Ismail’s stylised forms can be classified as a lyrical offshoot of geometric abstraction, departing from cubism by maintaining an interest in the sense of movement and continuous time that are alluded to with the gestural lines of calligraphy.

Born in Antioch, in 1922, at the age of sixteen Adham Ismail was already an accomplished artist. Migrating into greater Syria after the annexation of the country’s northwestern cities left his birthplace under Turkish rule, Ismail later studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome from 1952 to 1956 as part of a cultural exchange program initiated between the Italian and Syrian governments. After working for a brief time as an art instructor in Syria upon his return, he moved to Cairo where he was a consultant to the Egyptian Ministry of Culture and subsequently taught fresco painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus when he resettled in Syria. His work can be found in the National Museum of Damascus and the Syrian Ministry of Culture. 

Safwan Dahoul explores the corporeal and psychological effects of alienation, solitude, and longing that punctuate the human experience at various stages in life. Partly autobiographical, his ongoing Dream series utilises the formal properties of painting to recreate the subconscious sense of enclosure that surfaces during times of crisis, whether in mourning, estrangement, or political conflict. Dahoul’s recurring female protagonist facilitates this visceral encounter through her contorted body, often-vacant eyes, and minimised yet monumental physicality. Frequently depicted in the confinement of ambiguous settings, she is invariably defined by architectural details and the placement of interior accents such as a table or chair, deepening the state of her disaffection, as even the familiar becomes a site of distress.

Born in 1961 in Hama, Syria, Safwan Dahoul lives and works in Dubai. Dahoul attended the Suheil Al Ahdab Centre of Plastic Arts and the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus before receiving a scholarship to study abroad from the Syrian Ministry of Higher Education in 1987. After relocating to Belgium, he earned a doctorate from the Higher Institute of Plastic Arts in Mons in 1997. Later, he returned to Syria where he taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts for several years, and mentored an emerging generation of painters. An influential artist among today’s Arab painters, Dahoul’s painting style is recognised as the link between modern and contemporary Arab aesthetics.

Dahoul’s paintings are held in numerous private and public collections, including the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; The Samawi Collection, Dubai; The Farjam Collection, Dubai; and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, Kuwait. Recently, he has participated in solo and group exhibitions at Samsung Blue Square and Busan Museum of Art, South Korea (2014); Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2014, 2011); Ayyam Gallery Beirut (2014); Ayyam Gallery London (2013); Edge of Arabia, London, UK (2013); Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi (2013); and Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France (2012). 

Although the decorative, fine, and applied arts are often seen as separate disciplines, for Pierre Koukjian they are interconnected, as he paints his designs and designs his paintings. This gives his work an invigorated feel with limitless creative bounds. The artist’s series, Impressive People, is a campy Pop-inspired collection of oil paintings that iconifies artists, politicians and public figures into bold oil on canvas works. In the vivid canvases, Koukjian has sought to immortalize not only the personas of his subjects but also the saturation of their images in the international media. While many of the paintings make reference to Lebanese politics or music, others capture those who have made global headlines such as the Dalai Lama and Indira Gandhi, tapping into the makeup of celebrity status, and blurring the lines between popular culture and politics.

Born in Beirut in 1962, Pierre Koukjian is an award winning designer and painter. Having left Lebanon with the outbreak of civil war in the mid 1970s, he spent many years living as a nomad of sorts in Germany, France, and later the Far East. With little opportunity to finish a formal education, Koukjian jumped into the field of jewelry design as a young man. As an apprentice in workshops throughout Europe, he perfected the art of jewelry making and used painting in the planning stages of his designs. He worked vigorously in the medium, while also turning to sculpture as a form of creative expression. Often impressed by the aptitude of his canvases, clients would ask to keep these visual works, framing them and placing them in their homes. His early paintings are thus owned by numerous international celebrities. After long runs as a designer for some of the world’s most recognized brands, the artist launched his deLaCour atelier in 2002, gaining artistic freedom. 

Although known for vibrant compositions that merge the non-objective forms of twentieth-century abstraction with the symmetry, unity, and infinite space and time of Islamic art, Mouteea Murad’s entrance into art was marked by monochromatic, expressionist compositions that explore the anguish of modern man through stylised characters in ambiguous spaces. The featured lot represents this initial period of his oeuvre, which was widely acclaimed by Syrian critics and viewers alike when he debuted the series in Damascus in 2006. Murad’s early subject matter reflects the artist’s engagement with sociopolitical themes, and offer striking commentary on rampant corruption of power. Shortly before entering the Shabab Ayyam competition for young artists in 2007, Murad made the formative shift to abstraction, adding radiant hues to his palette.

Born in 1977 in Homs, Syria, Mouteea Murad lives and works in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. Murad received a Bachelor of Art from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus in 2001. His works are housed in private and public collections internationally, including the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts. The artist’s recent solo and group exhibitions include Nest Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland (2014); Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2013, 2011); Ayyam Gallery Beirut (2011); and Ayyam Gallery Damascus (2010). 

Dominated by vivacious childlike figures in various scenarios, Mohannad Orabi’s previous paintings reflect his interest in the spontaneity of process and the liberation of form that emerges when art is created intuitively without fixed directives. Many of these mixed-media canvases were painted as self-portraits, revealing the artist’s fascination with the evolution of consciousness in childhood and the wonder and whimsy of the formative years that first shape our comprehension of the world.

With the start of the Syrian uprising and the conflict that followed, Orabi adopted an increasingly realist approach to portraiture, drawing inspiration from the various media that are currently forging a visual repository of the war. Martyr posters, Facebook profile pictures, and other types of filtered or composed imagery serve as source material for portraits of Syrians under siege, displaced, and in exile, recording a side of the conflict that lies beyond its ideological divisions and political talking points. While the artist retains an interest in the socialisation processes of childhood, his own experiences of now living outside the country have led him to consider the ways in which visual culture, social media, and digital communication have become substitutes for what was once tangible.

Born in Damascus in 1977, Mohannad Orabi currently lives and works in Dubai. Orabi graduated from the Faculty of Fine Art, University of Damascus in 2000, and won the first prize in The Syrian National Young Artists Exhibition in 2006. Solo and group exhibitions include Ayyam Gallery London, United Kingdom (2014); Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2014, 2012); Ayyam Gallery Al Quoz, Dubai (2014, 2009); Ayyam Gallery Beirut, Lebanon (2014); Ayyam Gallery Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (2013); Ayyam Gallery Damascus, Syria (2008); Zara Gallery, Amman, Jordan (2007); and Ishtar Gallery, Damascus, Syria (2006, 2004).

In 2014, Orabi was listed among Foreign Policy’s '100 Leading Global Thinkers.' 

The multidisciplinary practice of Lebanese artist and architect Nadim Karam incorporates painting, drawing, sculpture, and writing in the creation of monumental imagery, artistic interventions, and conceptual proposals that argue for the social potential of futurist and alternative spaces, particularly those built on dreams. Drawing from a variety of cultural discourses, Karam has fashioned a distinct pictorial language that is based on an evolving series of characters, symbols, and settings, as he narrates the past, present, and future while working towards the reconfiguration of space. Cities are often the inspiration and target sites of his groundbreaking renewal projects and happenings.

The somber yet striking imagery of The Lady of the Levant under Fire (2013) signals a departure for the artist, whose works often reflect a visionary sense of optimism. An allegorical depiction of a region ripped apart by violent conflicts, the mixed media on canvas painting references the artist’s imaginative world as his characters are shown under attack, an unsettling comment of the stalled dreams of many in recent years.

Born in 1957 in Senegal, Nadim Karam lives and works in Beirut, where he has led a satellite grouping of Lebanese architects and designers as founder of Atelier Hapsitus since 1996. Karam initially trained in architecture at the American University of Beirut before traveling to Japan in 1982 to attend the University of Tokyo. In Japan, he studied with world-renowned architects and thinkers Hiroshi Hara, Fumihiko Maki, and Tadao Ando, and earned a doctorate in architecture. He was the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Art, and Design at Notre Dame University in Lebanon (2000-2003) and taught architectural design at the American University of Beirut (1993-1995; 2003-2004).

Karam has been commissioned to create large-scale urban art installations by cities across the globe and has participated in international events such as the Liverpool (2006), Venice (1996), and Gwangju (1995) biennales. Recently he has held solo shows at Ayyam Gallery Beirut, Dubai, and London (2013), and has been featured in group exhibitions at venues such as the Shanghai JSIP Biennale, China (2014); Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France (2013); Villa Empain, Brussels, Belgium (2012); and the Royal College of Art, London, United Kingdom (2012). 

Syrian artist Tammam Azzam creates a ‘hybrid form’ of painting through the application of various media, arriving at interactions between surface and form that borrow and multiply as compositions evolve. Unconventional materials such as rope, clothespins, and other found objects are employed to create depth, texture, and space, achieving a striking balance between ordinary objects and the expanse of the picture plane despite a visible tension.

Following the start of the uprising in Syria, Azzam turned to digital media to create visual composites of the conflict that have resonated with viewers. These widely-distributed works are informed by his interest in the interventionist potential of digital photography and street art as powerful and direct forms of protest that are difficult to suppress. In early 2013, Azzam made worldwide headlines when his work Freedom Graffiti went viral on social media. Enlisting one of the most iconic works of art, Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss, to protest the country's suffering, he superimposed a recognisable image of love over the walls of war-torn Damascus. Recently, he has returned to painting with Storeys, a series of monumental works that communicate the magnitude of devastation experienced across his native country through expressionist compositions of destroyed structures. Exposing the current state of his homeland to the world, Azzam delves into a therapeutic exercise of reconstruction, storey by storey.

Born in Damascus in 1980, Tammam Azzam lives and works in Dubai. He received his formal training from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus with a concentration in oil painting. Recently, Azzam has participated in solo and group exhibitions at such venues as Abu Dhabi Festival (2015); Framer Framed in de Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2015); Rush Arts, New York, USA (2014); FotoFest Biennial, Houston, USA (2014); Ayyam Gallery London, UK (2013); the 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts, Slovenia (2013); Ayyam Gallery Al Quoz, Dubai (2012, 2009); and Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2011). 

Since the late 1980s, Fadi Yazigi has built an oeuvre that consists of two strands of creativity, not only in media but also in subject matter, direction, and mood. Yazigi’s playful, robust sculptures of smiling figures are at once whimsical and inviting, yet his sobering works on canvas suggest a more pensive, graver outlook of the world with an evident sense of foreboding. And yet all of his stylised figures are partially inspired by the people he encounters, the personalities that make up scenes of the everyday, above all those of his native Syria.

Yazigi produces his paintings and sculptures as he experiments with different materials over the course of a concentrated period of time in the studio as he anticipates the emergence of a laden character. This has allowed him to explore various techniques and mediums, from using newspapers as canvases to creating two-dimensional reliefs. After several years of working in a limited palette, colour returned to his paintings in doses, adding an enlivened but persistently restrained sense of figuration.

Born in Latakia, Syria in 1966, Fadi Yazigi studied sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus, graduating in 1988. Yazigi has participated in numerous exhibitions in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and the United States, including Art Dubai, Art Abu Dhabi, Art Hong Kong, and the Sharjah Biennale. In 2007 he was an artist in residence at the Delfina Foundation in London, where he produced a significant body of work on paper, and in 2011 his multimedia oeuvre was highlighted in a mid-career retrospective held at The Mosaic Rooms, London. 

Palestinian artist Oussama Diab applies a conceptual approach to painting, exploiting the stylistic variants of the medium as emotive prompts in order to explore how form can articulate the urgency of sociopolitical issues. In an age where digital media have taken a dominant role in filtering our daily experiences and the construction of imagery has become integral to the negotiation of modern life, Diab addresses the contradictions and obstacles of political conflict, globalisation, and exile through playful symbolism, references to popular culture, iconic imagery, and narrative structures.

With each new series of work Diab adopts a different painting style, reflecting the impermanent nature of art as it becomes increasingly conceptual and further dematerialised, while also alluding to the sense of disorientation and the state of limbo that characterises the lives of the displaced. The featured lot exemplifies the artist’s latest series of paintings in which fragmentation is depicted as angular, asymmetric forms that transform the body as figures are suspended in time and space, and various objects are brought together as still life details of surrealist scenes.

Born in 1977 in Damascus, Syria, Oussama Diab lives and works in Beirut, Lebanon. A graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus in 2002, he has featured in solo and group shows in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, and is the recipient of numerous awards including the Shabab Young Artists exhibition in Syria. Diab has participated in recent exhibitions at Nest Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland (2014); Samsung Blue Square, Seoul and Busan Museum of Art, South Korea (2014); Ayyam Gallery Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (2014); Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2012); Ayyam Gallery Beirut, Lebanon (2011, 2010); and Ayyam Gallery Damascus, Syria (2009). 

Painter Walid El Masri’s practice revolves around the repeated examination of a single material subject as he explores variations in depth and space through abstracted compositions. In the past, the artist’s subject of choice was a chair, the stillness of which provided an anchoring pictorial element amidst the riotous brushwork of an unidentified setting. Like Morandi's vases or Cezanne's apples, El Masri's depictions are less about the objects themselves and more about the possibility of transformation that is derived from paying close attention to the object over time. In a recent body of work the artist observes movement and vibration as encapsulated in the life cycle of a butterfly cocoon, the dramatic transition of which stands as a symbolic representation of Syria in its current state.

Of Lebanese background, El Masri was born in Syria in 1979. Prior to completing a Bachelor of Art at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus in 2005, he studied the art of mosaic in Syria and trained with renowned expressionist painter Marwan Kassab Bachi at the Summer Academy of Darat Al-Funun, Amman, Jordan. Selected solo exhibitions include Ayyam Gallery London (2014); Europia Gallery Paris, France (2014); Ayyam Gallery Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (2013); Ayyam Gallery Beirut, Lebanon (2013); Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai, UAE (2012); Ayyam Gallery Al Quoz, Dubai, UAE (2009); Art Beijing Contemporary Art Fair, China (2009); Art Hong Kong Art Fair, China (2009); and Ayyam Gallery Damascus, Syria (2008). 

Farouk Kondakji’s landscapes are rendered with the soft brushstrokes and muted palettes of Impressionism yet surpass the stylised figuration of the modern school by venturing into dense abstraction, as areas of the canvas often progress from identifiable settings to shadowy colour fields or delicately textured expanses that describe the fleeting nature of perception. For the artist, these ethereal scenes serve as realist depictions of how he views reality. Alternating between subtle highlights and dramatic shadows, Kondakji renders a world in which time seems to pass with the implied movement of clouds or allusions to the gentle rustling of trees. A recurring aspect of his landscapes is the absence of human figures.

Born in Herns, Syria in 1958, Farouk Kondakji studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus. Kondakji is the recipient of the Diplome D’Honneur de Peinture from Aix en Provence, France—the so-called city of Impressionism. He has participated in regional and international exhibitions since 1974 at venues such as the Museum of Damascus, Syria; Athr Gallery, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China. Based in Saudi Arabia for several decades, he is an influential member of the Jeddah art scene, having established a multipurpose art space in 1992, where he regularly exhibits regional and international artists, and maintains a personal studio. Kondakji recently showed his paintings at Abu Dhabi Art (2013) and Athr Gallery (2013).

Kondakji’s works are housed in collections throughout Saudi Arabia, including the Saudi French Bank; the National Commercial Bank; and King Abdul Aziz and King Khaled airports. In addition to his work as a painter and gallery founder, he has served as a stage designer, and has lectured widely on ancient civilisations and aesthetics. 

Kais Salman utilises satire to subvert the normalisation of greed, vanity, and ideological extremism that is rapidly defining our era. Each series of Salman’s work has sought to reflect a type of psychological violence that occurs when excess becomes rationalised and accepted by societies. Seeking to confront and exorcise sociocultural manifestations of such depravity, Salman taps into ugliness and abjection through intentionally hyperbolised imagery accentuated by punches of colour and aestheticised forms. Terrorism, consumerism, cosmetic surgery, religious fanaticism, imperialism, and the voyeurism of the digital age have all served as topics of Salman’s carnivalesque compositions.

Born in Tartous, Syria in 1976, Kais Salman lives and works in Beirut. He received a Bachelor of Art degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus in 2002. His paintings are currently housed in private collections throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. Solo and group exhibitions include the Alexandria Biennale (2014); Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2014, 2010); Ayyam Gallery Beirut (2015, 2014, 2012); Ayyam Gallery Al Quoz, Dubai (2014, 2011, 2010); the Damascus Museum of Modern Art (2009); The Park Avenue Armory, New York (2008); the Carthage Festival for Coast Mediterranean Sea Artists, Tunisia (2005). In May 2010 a work from his Fashion Series appeared on the cover of the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Edition magazine, a first for an Arab artist. Most recently, his paintings were featured in the New York Times and The Art Newspaper. 

Born in Kuwait to a Syrian mother and a Kuwaiti father, Shurooq Amin is a leading interdisciplinary artist who is known for her provocative mixed media paintings. In addition to Amin’s noteworthy career as a visual artist, she is a widely published, Pushcart Prize nominated poet and holds a doctorate in Creative Writing and Ekphrasis from Warnborough College, England.

Utilising a postmodern approach to portraiture that combines photography and painting, Amin depicts her anonymous, multi-generational figures with humour and irony as she reveals the intrinsic contradictions of a conservative society built on hidden lives, collective denial, and widespread corruption. Exploring the cultural chasms of modern-day Arab society as it becomes increasingly escapist and steered by global consumerism and popular culture, Amin’s works frequently return to one of the most universally taboo subjects: the traditional familial structure and the gender roles that maintain it.

Exhibiting since the mid 1990s, Amin’s paintings are housed in public and private collections in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Her selected solo and group exhibitions include Ayyam Gallery London (2014); Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2014); Ayyam Gallery Al Quoz, Dubai (2013); Lahd Gallery, London (2011); CAN, New York (2010); Tilal Gallery, Kuwait (2010); and the International Cairo Art Biennale (2008). Amin will be featured in the forthcoming exhibition Eye of the Thunderstorm: Effervescent Practices from the Arab World, a collateral event of the 56th Venice Biennale (2015).

In 2013, Amin was awarded the title of ‘Artist of the Year’ by the Arab Woman Awards, Kuwait chapter and was the first female Kuwaiti artist to be auctioned at Christie’s in 2012. A retrospective of her work was featured in the biannual art journal, Contemporary Practices: Visual Arts from the Middle East. A monograph highlighting two decades of the artist’s oeuvre was published by Ayyam Gallery in 2014. 

Reza Lavassani’s meticulously executed paintings poetically reinterpret the artistic heritage of his native Iran with imaginative imagery. Drawing on subject matter and motifs that are found in the rich traditions of Persian poetry, music, and miniature manuscript illumination, the artist’s boldly coloured canvases masterfully integrate the natural world as part of a mystical, spiritual realm. His Water, Wind, Earth and Fire series consists of vibrant diptychs and triptychs illustrating fauna and flora through curvilinear delineation reminiscent of the Chinese- inspired art of the Timurid period while also possessing a futuristic appearance with strategic white highlights that create metallic effects. The ubiquitous themes of regeneration through a continuous expanse of time that appear in his paintings and sculptures are tied to his studies of mysticism and philosophy, particularly as they surface in mythology, sociology, and history.

Born in 1962 in Tehran, Reza Lavassani received his Bachelor of Arts in painting from the University of Tehran’s Faculty of Fine Arts in 1991. Since then he has held several solo exhibitions in Iran and has been part of numerous national and international group exhibitions. The artist has been the recipient of several awards including UNESCO’s Noma Concourse (1994 and 2007), the first prize at Tehran’s 4th Biennial of Sculpture, and 6th Biennial of Illustration. Lavassani’s works can be found in private collections throughout the Middle East. 

Farhad Hussain’s paintings are characterised by an explosion of neon colours that permeate his whimsical, stylised characters and the geometrically divided cityscapes or interiors surrounding them. Inspired by ordinary scenes of his native India and the popular visual culture that defines urban life, Hussain plots his compositions with meticulous consideration so that the built environments situating his figures become active design details of equal pictorial importance: key components of each scene’s described dynamism. Beneath the jolliness of his characters lies Hussain’s subtle yet firm critique of India’s middle-class, complemented by the artist’s societal observations of his homeland.

In the featured lot, the repetitive succession of towers composing the background of Hussain’s canvas is intertwined with pink clouds, vibrant flowers, and multi-coloured balloons while a festive crowd depicted with the theatrics of a Bollywood film happily poses for the viewer.

Born in Jharkhand, India in 1975, Hussain obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan in 2003, and a Master of Fine Arts in Painting degree from M.S. University, Baroda in 2005. He has exhibited widely in India, including solo exhibitions at the Museum Gallery, Mumbai (2009) and Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi (2008). Hussain has also participated in various group shows throughout Asia.

The artist currently lives and works in New Delhi. 

Considered one of Iran’s leading contemporary artists, Pooya Aryanpour combines premeditated elements initially inspired by ambient sounds, and those resulting from intuition, which he allows to lead during his creative process. Working on vaporous white abstracted forms set against dark backgrounds, Aryanpour articulates his views on interdependencies existing between humans and nature. The perceptibly radiographic aspects of the featured lot, for example, signify the depth of the artist’s philosophical musings, stemming from the study of emotionally charged Persian poetry that allows him to transcend the given moment.

Born in 1971 in Tehran, where he still lives and works today, Pooya Aryanpour obtained both undergraduate and graduate degrees in painting from the city’s Azad University. Between 1994 and 2009, he held various solo exhibitions in Tehran, Iran and Stockholm, Sweden. Aryanpour has also participated in numerous group exhibitions in Turkey, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, China, Switzerland, France, United Kingdom, and United States, including the Magic of Persia Contemporary Art Prize, Los Angeles (2014); a collective show of painting held at Seyhoun Art Gallery, Tehran; and a joint exhibition with Morteza Darenbaghi at Meem Gallery, Dubai (2010). 

Mouteea Murad’s entrance into art was marked by monochromatic, expressionist compositions that explored the anguish of modern man. In 2007, however, he emerged with a renewed outlook that redirected his painting style. Abandoning his initial aesthetic, he began to explore colour relativity, spatiality, and the visual dynamism of geometric forms by adhering to the non-objective directives of Islamic art, which references the splendor of the natural world by privileging abstraction and its ability to ignite the senses. Several phases of painting have resulted from Murad’s new focus as he builds on the breakthroughs of previous movements, exploring, for example, automatic brushwork, the illusionistic perspective of Op art, the symmetry of geometric abstraction, and the collapsing planes of Suprematism.

In recent years the unification of spirituality and formalism of Islamic art has continued to serve as the basis for Murad’s work as he rejects the ugliness of war now plaguing his native Syria. Seeking to offer beauty to a world consumed by conflict, he finds inspiration in the quiet moments that surround him, such as a blossoming tree in his studio’s garden. This sense of serenity becomes an act of defiance as his compositions radiate with colour in harmonious linear patterns that seek to transport the viewer.

Born in 1977 in Homs, Syria, Mouteea Murad lives and works in Sharjah. He received a Bachelor of Art from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus in 2001. His works are housed in private and public collections internationally, including the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts. The artist’s recent solo and group exhibitions include Nest Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland (2014); Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2013, 2011); Ayyam Gallery Beirut, Lebanon (2011); Ayyam Gallery Damascus, Syria (2010). 

Asaad Arabi’s colourful, expressionistic paintings investigate dichotomies extant in Arab societies, from the permissiveness of the 1960s Arab cultural renaissance to the subsequent emergence of social taboos. With energetic brushstrokes and a game of contrasts, Arabi displaces his canvases from their static, two- dimensional form, creating dynamic narratives.

Recognised as one of the pioneers of contemporary Syrian art, the painter has explored various subjects through a multitude of styles over the course of his prolific career. Arabi’s early work, presenting realistic depictions of popular Damascene alleys and everyday scenes, gradually evolved into abstraction, with an important phase of geometric experimentation that followed. His recent canvases include expressionist tributes to cultural icons such as Umm Kulthum and Maurice Béjart. For the artist, visual arts and music are undeniably interlinked, thus the melodic ambient surrounding each of his scenes is translated as lines and colours. Throughout epochs and artistic currents, Arabi has highlighted a longstanding regional heritage in an attempt to inspire a thirst for ever-growing cultural achievement within the young generation.

Born in 1941, Asaad Arabi graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in his native Damascus, where he studied under the Italian artist and instructor Guido La Regina, a leader of a new abstractionist school in Syria. Following his move to Paris in 1975, Arabi received a diploma in painting from the Higher Institute of Fine Arts, and later earned a PhD in Aesthetics from the prestigious Sorbonne University. His subsequent studies, essays and critiques have been widely published in both French and Arabic, elevating the painter to the rank of prominent art theorist. 

With highly symbolic photographs, videos, and performative interventions focused on his native Palestine, multidisciplinary artist Khaled Jarrar explores modern power struggles and their sociocultural impact on ordinary citizens. The everyday objects appearing in Jarrar’s reflective work, whether by their shape or nature, are juxtaposed with the severity of the issues he examines, thus giving the political content of his art greater significance while underscoring the autobiographical nature of his chosen themes. The featured lot is from the artist’s acclaimed series of sculptures and art objects, which are created with repurposed concrete from the apartheid wall that cuts through Palestinian villages and cities in the West Bank as one of many disastrous facets of the Israeli occupation. Combining a dissected tree trunk with a concrete half, Jarrar offers a jarring metaphor for the failure of international peace talks, which have paradoxically led to the further fragmentation of Palestine and the crippling of life for its indigenous population.

Born in Jenin in 1976, Khaled Jarrar lives and works in Ramallah, Palestine. Jarrar completed his education in Interior Design at the Palestine Polytechnic University in 1996, and later graduated from the International Academy of Art, Palestine with a Bachelor in Visual Arts degree in 2011. A year later, his documentary The Infiltrators won several accolades at the 9th Annual Dubai International Film Festival, confirming his importance as a filmmaker in the international scene.

Jarrar’s recent solo exhibitions were held at Galerie Polaris, Paris, France (2014, 2012); Gallery One, Ramallah, Palestine (2014); Ayyam Gallery London (2013); Galerie Guy Bartschi, Geneva, Switzerland (2013); the NEWTOPIA: The State of Human Rights Contemporary Arts in Mechelen and Brussels, Belgium (2012); Al-Mahatta Gallery, Ramallah, Palestine (2009). The artist’s recent group exhibitions include such venues as Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, Italy (2015); the New Museum, New York, United States (2014); Kashya Hildebrand Gallery, London, UK (2014); the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria (2014); USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, United States (2013); The Madrid Palestine Film Festival, Spain (2013); the 15th Jakarta Biennale (2013); the 7th Berlin Biennale (2012); 52nd October Salon, Belgrade (2011); and Al- Ma’mal Foundation, Jerusalem, Palestine (2010). 

Considered the father of modern Iranian sculpture, Parviz Tanavoli is also a world renowned painter, scholar, and teacher. The initiator of the 1960s Saqqakhaneh movement, which reconciled traditional Persian aesthetics, namely calligraphy, with aspects of modernism, Tanavoli has created a legendary, ever-evolving style through a prolific practice. Although he has cyclically returned to metaphorical representations of windows, locks, and birds throughout his career, Tanavoli is best known for his iconic, ongoing project entitled Heech. Created in 1965 in order to counter what the artist perceived as a vain tendency among his contemporaries, the three letter sculpture, signifying ‘nothingness’ in Farsi, appears in various sizes and forms: polished bronze, fibreglass, or neon. A boldly radical body of work, Heech has acquired a distinct identity over the years, assuming various manifestations within eclectic contexts; a ‘nothing’ that has paradoxically evolved through time and space as Tanavoli’s central character.

Born in Tehran, Iran in 1937, Tanavoli has lived in Vancouver, Canada since 1989. Following studies at the Brera Academy of Milan, Tanavoli taught sculpture at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He returned to Iran in the 1960s to spearhead the sculpture department at the University of Tehran. With dozens of publications written over several decades, Tanavoli is also a respected scholar of Iranian art.

In addition to the artist’s recent retrospective at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Boston, USA, his work was showcased in an earlier survey at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in 2003. Tanavoli’s multimedia works have been displayed worldwide, most notably at the Metropolitan Museum, New York City, (2012); the British Museum, London (2006); New York University’s Grey Art Gallery (2002, 1976); and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1962).

Tanavoli’s work is also housed in numerous public and private collections, including the Tate Modern and the British Museum, London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna; the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran; Mathaf Museum, Qatar; the National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman; and the Guggenheim Museum, Abu Dhabi. 

Rachid Koraichi’s work is inspired by various types of calligraphy and the significations that can be unearthed when texts are transformed into new pictorial forms. Arabic calligraphy is frequently a starting point for the artist, as he applies a meditative process to executing his work, one derived from the practices that shaped his Sufi upbringing. Koraichi’s consideration of script as the basis for aesthetic experiments and conceptual strategies appears across diverse media, as the artist’s extensive oeuvre—created over the span of several decades—comprises ceramics, textiles, drawings, sculptures, paintings, and installations. Repetition and the artist’s limited palette maintain the focus on contemplation that is central to sacred imagery. At the same time, like previous masters of calligraphy, Korachi’s text-based works lead the viewer to pictorial spaces in which cosmic forces are described as operating in unison, a depiction of the world that is outwardly chaotic with limitless space and time yet anchored by visibly linked forms.

Born in Ain Beida, Algeria in 1947, Rachid Koraichi initially trained at the Institute of Fine Arts and the Superior National School of the Arts in Algeria. In 1971, Koraichi moved to France where he enrolled at National School of Decorative Arts, and later attended the School of Urban Studies, Paris. He is currently based between Tunisia and France.

Widely recognised as a leading North African artist, Koraichi’s works have been exhibited at international venues such as the British Museum (2006); the Museum of Modern Art, New York, United States (2006); the Venice Biennale (1999, 1997); and the Havana Biennial (1997). The artist’s solo shows include Cornell University, United States (2002); the National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman, Jordan (2002); Leighton House Museum, London, United Kingdom (1998); and Musee National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou (1991). Koraichi’s sculptures and paintings are housed in the British Museum; the National Museum for African Art, United States; and the Museum of Islamic Arts, Qatar; among other private and public collections. 

Sahand Hesamiyan’s sculptural works derive their angular forms from the geometric patterns and shapes that are essential to Islamic aesthetics. Deconstructing the compositional and structural elements of sacred objects and architecture, Hesamiyan identifies the fundamental designs of historical examples and re-imagines their basic components as three-dimensional blueprints for altering the immediate space of the viewer. The repetition, symmetry, and progression in scale central to his works emphasise the meditative and transcendental functions of Islamic art and architecture.

Born in Iran in 1977, Sahand Hesamiyan received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from Tehran University (2007). Hesamiyan has participated in sculptural biennials, symposiums, and competitions throughout his career. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Municipality Prize of the Fourth Contemporary Iranian Sculptural Biennial, and was a finalist of the Magic of Persia Prize. Additionally, he has served as a member of the managing board of the Sixth Tehran Contemporary Sculpture Biennial, and a judge for the Third Tehran Urban Sculpture Biennial.

As one of Iran’s leading sculptors, Hesamiyan has exhibited internationally since 1999. His recent solo shows were held at such venues as The Third Line, Dubai (2014, 2013); Aun Gallery, Tehran (2011); and Ave Gallery, Tehran (2008). The artist’s collective exhibitions include Lajevardi Collection, Tehran (2015); Athr Gallery, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (2014); National Museum Adrien Dubouche, Limoges, France (2014); AB Gallery, Lucrene, Switzerland (2013); the Royal College of Art, London, United Kingdom (2012); and Morono Kian Gallery, Los Angeles, United States (2011). 

Ahmed Askalany is a multidisciplinary artist who utilises materials and techniques dating back to ancient times in sculptural works that are inspired by the traditional aesthetics of his birthplace. As a sort of contemporary homage to the resounding visual culture of Upper Egypt, he employs woven palm leaves and resin, in addition to ceramic, bronze, and wood in other works, to emphasise playful voluminous forms. Blurring the boundaries between fine art and folk art, he subtly questions the limitations of sculpture while enunciating the possible horizons of installation art in which objects are situated as defining elements of space. Continuously expanding the scope of his oeuvre, he has also produced a sizeable collection of painting.

Born in 1978 in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, Ahmed Askalany has regularly exhibited since 2000, participating in a number of national competitions, such as the Cairo International Biennial and Egypt’s annual Youth Salon. Askalany has been highlighted in exhibitions at Cairo’s leading art spaces Masar Gallery (2009), Al Mashrabia Gallery (2006), and Townhouse Gallery (2004). Internationally, he has exhibited throughout the Middle East and Europe, most notably at the 2009 Venice Biennale, where he represented Egypt. Askalany’s works are held in notable private and public collections, including the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah. 

Jordanian artist Dana Rousan marks her entrance into art by creating abstract, three-dimensional geometrical structures in mixed media that explore a series of thoughts, triggered by a sensational journey where each moment is a celebration to the artist. Strong contrasts and radiant colours are prominent in her work, creating impactful expressions and stimulating a notional movement within the multi-layered compositions, portraying energy, complexity, depth, and countless rounds of reflections in search of a balanced mind.

Born in Amman, Jordan, Rousan lives and works in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. The artist graduated from L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Besancon, France in 1996 and received a Certificat d'Etudes Supèrieur d'Arts Plastiques. Rousan trained in France and pursued a successful career in graphic design, advertising, and television in Jordan, winning awards in the respective fields. In 2014, the artist exhibited in a double-featured show at the Zara Art Gallery, Amman. 

Combining a variety of visual techniques and technologies, Hind Bin Demaithan explores social themes related to women, religion, and culture, often through a subjective lens informed by her own experiences. Her artistic growth through photography, installation, performance, and video has led to a communicative approach that assembles necessary media in order to deliver an immersive message. Inspired by Arabic fashion, Badawyah fy Paress (A Bedouin in Paris) (2011)—a title adapted from an Egyptian film—is an evolving artwork depicting anonymous women of the twentieth century. The artist meticulously produces profile images, much like cameos of the Victorian era, with precise colour tones reminiscent of hand-coloured photography as a means of weaving cultural aesthetics while combining the motifs of Orientalist art with high fashion imagery and the symmetrical geometry of Islamic art. Although referencing the past, the resulting images form a sort of Arab futurism.

Born in the United Arab Emirates in 1987, Hind Bin Demaithan holds a Bachelors degree in Art and Design from Zayed University, Dubai, and a Master of Fine Art degree in Theatre and Integrated Media from the California Institute of Arts, United States. In 2009, Demaithan volunteered as an ambassador of the United Arab Emirates National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and was also selected as an official delegate of the Sheikha Manal Bint Mohammed Al Maktoum Art Exchange Program. The artist has exhibited at venues including Art of MENA Gallery, Paris, France (2011); Lahd Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2010); Elementa Gallery, Dubai (2009); and the Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland (2008). 

The dreamlike compositions of Lebanese photographer Lara Zankoul explore the human psyche within the context of social experience. Many of Zankoul’s whimsical images demonstrate an attempt to invent new worlds, to push against the boundaries of reality in order to escape the monotony of ordinary life. At the same time, Zankoul offers subtle critiques of modern society, fixing her figures in settings that often reflect the taxing psychology of everyday interactions or scenarios as her subjects navigate its various dimensions. The characters portrayed in Zankoul’s works are anonymous and timeless, universal subjects existing within surreal landscapes where the senses are heightened and exaggerated facets reveal affecting details that otherwise remain obscured.

Born in Lebanon in 1987, Lara Zankoul lives and works in the country’s capital, where she earned a graduate degree in Economics from the American University of Beirut. Since beginning her artistic practice in 2008, she has participated in exhibitions and workshops throughout the Middle East and Europe. In 2011, she was an award recipient at the first ever Shabab Ayyam Photography Competition. Zankoul held her first (2013) and second (2014) solo exhibitions at Ayyam Gallery Beirut. Recent group shows for the artist include The Road to Elysium, HEIST Gallery, United Kingdom (2014); the third edition of the Festival Photomed, France (2013); and Women’s Art, Art Lounge, Lebanon (2011). 

Utilising compositional forms of documentary photography, Hrair Sarkissian’s architectural landscapes leave an eerie impression on the viewer, as the vacant spaces of his photographs are visibly pregnant with obscured narratives. Much of Sarkissian’s works explore the limitations of photography, exposing the absence of a human figure and the presence of humanity’s legacy on social spaces by focusing on individual and collective persecution, migration, and forced displacement.

Born in 1973 in Damascus, Syria Hrair Sarkissian spent the majority of his youth in his father’s photography shop—the first photographic colour laboratory in Syria—perfecting his craft before becoming an artist in the early 2000s. Sarkissian completed a Bachelor of Fine Art degree in Photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Netherlands in 2010.

A leading contemporary photographer from the Middle East, Sarkissian has exhibited internationally since 2003. He has held solo exhibitions at such venues as SALT Beyoglu, Istanbul (2011); Kalfayan Galleries, Athens (2010, 2008); and The Museum of Photography, Thessaloniki (2007). Selected group exhibitions for the artist include the New Museum, New York, United States (2014); Friche Belle de Mai, Marseille, France (2013); Herbert F. Johnson Museum, New York, United States (2012); Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom (2011); Darat Al Funun, Amman, Jordan (2011); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece (2008).

Sarkissian’s works can be found in the collections of the Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom; Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena, Italy; the Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; and The Farjam Collection, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. He is the recipient of the 2012 Abraaj Capital Art Prize. 

Fascinated by the possibilities of cinematic narratives, Youssef Nabil has developed a highly successful artistic career—inspired by the golden age of Egyptian Cinema—with the precision and blissful disruption of hand- painted silver gelatin photographs. Nabil’s subjects are immortalized in scenes of an unattainable nostalgic world where the artist places himself, at times, in order to reflect a perceivable sense of loneliness stemming from displacement.

Born in 1972, New York-based Egyptian artist Youssef Nabil originally developed his artistic practice in the 1990s by hand-colouring silver gelatin photographs of his fellow artists and friends. In 2010, Nabil debuted his first film You Never Left, which was considered a major turning point in his career.

Internationally recognised, he has exhibited at venues such as the British Museum, London, United Kingdom; Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City; Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt; FotoFest, Houston, United States; Centre de Cultura Contemporanea de Barcelona, Spain; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France; Kunstmuseum, Bonn, Germany; The Third Line, Dubai; and the Aperture Foundation, New York, United States. His works are included in collections such as La Maison Europeenne de la photographie, Paris, France; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar; a joint collection between The British Museum and The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom; and the Guggenheim Museum, Abu Dhabi. Flammarion (2013), Hatje Cantz (2008), and Autograph ABP & Michael Stevenson (2007) have published monographs on the artist. 

Celebrated for her iconic depictions of women, photographer Shadi Ghadirian navigates the many idiosyncrasies and contradictions present in contemporary Iran. Fundamental societal issues like religion, censorship, tradition, and modernity are addressed and often subverted, resulting in multi-dimensional portraits rich in symbolism and commentary.

In this series, the photographer explores the cultural phenomenon of the veil. Here the female figure, complete with hijab, a contentious garment enforced on all women in Iran on the grounds of modesty, gazes out enigmatically at the viewer. Ghadirian adds a layer of metaphorical veil to the composition in the form of a roughly painted glass pane placed in front of the figure. Whilst the woman is still partially visible, the intention here is clear and the viewer’s separation from her is intensified.

Born in 1974 in Tehran, Shadi Ghadirian graduated from Azad University with a Bachelor’s degree in Photography. Achieving international recognition after featuring in the seminal exhibition Unveiled, New Art From the Middle East held at the Saatchi Gallery, London (2009), Ghardirian has exhibited internationally since 2000. Selected group exhibitions for the artist include Quai Branly Museum, Paris (2009); The British Museum, London (2006); The Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran (2002); and Nikolaj Contemporary Art Center Copenhagen, Denmark (2000). Her selected solo exhibitions include Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA (2008); Tasweer Gallery, India (2008); and the French Cultural Center, Damascus, Syria (2006). Ghardirian’s works are held in public collections including The British Museum, UK; The Victoria and Albert Museum, UK; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA; The Smithsonian Museum, USA; Centre Georges Pompidou, France; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran. 

Employing a variety of approaches, Mohamad Badr has experimented with photographic practices from fashion photography to site-specific documentary with what he describes as ‘a deep sense of social responsibility.’ The artist’s interest in capturing a range of imagery has frequently led him to focus on often-overlooked facets of life in the Middle East with acute perception and a demonstrated command of photographic formalism.

The featured work from Badr’s Prayer of Light series uses a conceptual approach to black and white photography with attention to light and contrast. Badr’s visual consideration of this formal signifier, documented through thirteen images within the series, stems from a deep attachment to his aunt, who looked after him as a child. In Badr’s dramatic images, her figure dominates, standing alone in prayer as she connects to God through the divine light. Badr’s guardian projects an intimidating presence as she experiences a heightened state of mind that replaces superficial conceptions of age with the importance of innate power derived from spiritual intuitiveness.

Born in Lebanon in 1981, Mohamad Badr lives and works in Dubai. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2011 Shabab Ayyam Photography competition, and the Live Achrafieh Honorary Award (2011). He was also nominated for the fourth cycle of the Prix Pictet, the world’s leading photographic award in sustainability (2012). He is the founder of the Lakum Hamra2akoum wa Li Hamra2, photography project in Lebanon, and Mosaic: Achrafieh International Photography Contest, Lebanon’s first international photography competition. In 2012, Badr’s solo exhibition at Ayyam Gallery Beirut, Bloody Streets: Manifestation of Power, received wide acclaim for its provocative subject matter. 

Ammar Al Beik’s artistic career stems from unconventional roots. Abandoning his pursuit of a degree in business administration from the University of Damascus, he began experimenting with photography while working at a camera repair shop in the heart of the Syrian capital. Receiving rigorous training through this inadvertent apprenticeship, he began to work in photography and inevitably turned to filmmaking. Two decades into his artistic practice, Al Beik continues to alternate between photography and film, and recently added installation to his repertoire, effortlessly moving between media with an acute sense of capturing narrative structures through subtle nuances while using various conceptual approaches and experimental forms, all with an incisive interest in the potential of art as an act of rebellion.

Born in Damascus, Syria in 1972, Ammar Al Beik is based in Berlin, Germany. Al Beik’s artworks have featured in international exhibitions since the late 1990s, most recently at Photo Shanghai, China (2014); FotoFest Biennial, USA (2014); and Samsung Blue Square and the Busan Museum of Art, South Korea (2014); and are housed in private and public collections such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA (2013); and the Museum of Modern Art, USA (2010).

Al Beik’s films have been shown at numerous international festivals including (Locarno, IFF), Switzerland; (Rotterdam, IFFR), Netherlands; (Yamagata, YIDFF), Japan; (Busan, BISFF), South Korea; (Nantes, Festival Des3 Continents), France; (Paris, Cinéma du réel, DIFF), France; (Oberhausen, ISFF), Germany; (São Paulo, IFF), Brazil; (Singapore, SGIFF), Singapore; (FIDMarseille), France; (Carthage, IFF), Tunis; and (Dubai, DIFF), UAE. He is the only filmmaker to represent Syria twice at the Venice Film Festival with the long film I Am the One Who Brings Flowers to Her Grave (2006) and the short film The Sun’s Incubator (2011), both of which were shown in the Orizzonti competition.

As a filmmaker, Al Beik is the recipient of several awards, including the Doc/It Award at the Venice Film Festival, Italy (2006); the Bronze Muhr Award (Dubai, DIFF), UAE (2006); the Jury Prize at the (Busan, BISFF), South Korea (2012); the Golden Award at the (Tétouan, IFF), Morocco (2007); the Jury Award at the (Brisbane, BAPFF), Australia (2002); and Special Award (International Federation of Film Societies, IFSS), Switzerland (2002).

Al Beik’s recent film La Dolce Syria (2014) was screened at the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival.

Specialising in photography, collage, and mixed media, Sumaya Abdul Ghani seeks to promote Islam’s enlightening nature by creating rhythmic and organic patterns that constitute forms of Islamic art. The featured lot Al Meezan (scale) developed from an interactive performance in which each participant was asked to execute the concept of the afterlife with the use of stones. Abdul Ghani’s interest in the symbolic separation of good and evil, calculated by the divine scale, led the artist to fulfil a need to promote the message of good deeds by turning photographic images of the symbolic stones into attractive, delicate designs.

Born in 1970, Bahraini artist Sumaya Abdul Ghani develops the concepts of her works after extensive research of morality and purity in religion. Abdul Ghani’s vernacular patterns symbolically eliminate negativity towards Islam and introduce the faith’s theological and philosophical beauty. In 2014 Abdul Ghani participated in collective exhibitions at the Maraya Art Center, Sharjah and Istanbul Design Week. 

The mixed media paintings of Hamza Bounoua intertwine Berber script, expressive brushstrokes, and references to Eastern mysticism in a declination of mahogany, scarlet, and ashen hues with the aim of connecting the present and the past across geographic boundaries. Deliberately constructing an indiscernible language, Bounoua strives for an amalgamation of aesthetic associations. From his native North Africa he adapts a tradition of window painting known as Mereedeen, which consists of applying successive layers of paint onto the previously etched back of Plexiglass panels. The juxtaposition of contrasts, an ancient technique applied to contemporary signifiers, in addition to the areas of opacity and transparency of his compositions, transforms Bounoua’s works into windows between epochs and cultures.

Hamza Bounoua was born in Algeria in 1979, and studied Fine Arts at École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Algiers between 1997 and 2002. Bounoua has held solo exhibitions in North Africa, West Asia, Europe, and the Americas at such venues as Albareh Gallery, Adliya, Bahrain (2012, 2011); Wadi Finan Gallery, Amman, Jordan (2013); and Agora Gallery, New York, United States (2010).

The artist has received several accolades, most notably first prizes at the Mediterranean Sea Award, France (2000); the International Euro-Algerian Conference, Belgium (2001); and the International Mohamed Abd El Mouhsen El Khorafi Award of Modern and Contemporary Arab Art, Kuwait (2006). Bounoua’s works are held in public and private collections, including the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah.

Today, Bounoua lives and works between Algeria and Kuwait. 

Peyman Shaafi was trained in the traditional Nasta'liq style of calligraphy, which he combines with other scripts to create a dancing narrative across his canvases. Alternating between colours, textures, and metallic finishes, Shaafi’s spiritual creations originate from the experience of encountering his father’s book about the poetry of Hafez and its untranslatability. To his harmonious calligraphic compositions, he adds movement with an original conceptual technique that consists of lifting the canvas off its stretcher to form single or crossed elevated diagonals, resulting in three-dimensional art objects.

Born in Iran in 1974, Peyman Shaafi lives and works in Paris, France. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Tehran, Iran and internationally. Venues which recently showcased his work include Aun Gallery, Tehran (2014); Seyhoun Art Gallery, Los Angeles, United States (2013); and Galerie Nicolas Flamel, Paris (2013). 

A preeminent figure of contemporary Iranian art, Salar Ahmadian deconstructs traditional calligraphic forms in order to reach complex abstract shapes that appear to whirl across his canvases as sculptural ribbons adapted to two-dimensional surfaces. Creating a sense of infinite depth against uniform backgrounds, Ahmadian’s works alternate between colour schemes reminiscent of the vibrant palettes of Pop art and the more subtle combinations of Islamic manuscripts which privilege subdued monochromatisms. The fluid lines of his hybrid compositions appear without beginning or end, resulting in a dynamic type of hardedge neo-expressionism through which space and time are boundless, and the meaning of texts becomes obsolete as sensation takes over amidst cyclonic movement.

Born in Iran in 1962, Salar Ahmadian studied Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Tehran and received a certificate in calligraphy from Iran’s Association of Calligraphers before moving to Canada in the 1990s. In addition to numerous exhibitions in Toronto and Vancouver, Ahmadian’s work has been featured in over a hundred solo and group shows worldwide, most notably at Mah e Mehr Gallery, Tehran (2010); Hunar Gallery, Tehran (2008); Chelsea Gallery, London (2008); Georgetown Gallery, Washington D.C. (2005); and Orlando Museum of Art, United States (2004). 

Mohammad Bozorgi approaches calligraphy with an architectural eye that is evident in the mathematical structure and symmetry of letters of his paintings, particularly in his Crying for Honour series. Bozorgi’s masterful command of the centuries-old tradition is the result of intensive studies in classical calligraphic forms such as divani, kufic, naskh, sols, Mohaggegh, and broken Nasta'liq in order to develop distinctly stylised characters based on Arabic and Persian examples. After training with the Society of Iranian Calligraphers for over a decade, Bozorgi left the institution to pursue more innovative calligraphic techniques. Drawing from his background in engineering, he makes qualitative calculations when constructing his works, using the directives of geometry to create abstract illusions of movement and space. Building on the breakthroughs of his predecessors, such as those who led the Saqqakhaneh school of Iranian painters in the 1960s, Bozorgi is recognised as a leading figure among the ‘New Generation’ of contemporary calligraphers.

Born in Tehran in 1978, Mohammad Bozorgi holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering as well as a graduate degree from the Industrial Management Institute and Momtaz degrees from the Calligraphy Association of Iran. His recent solo and group exhibitions include Ayyam Gallery Dubai, Al Quoz (2015); Ayyam Gallery, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (2014); Homa Gallery, Tehran, Iran (2014); Galerie Nicolas Flamel, Paris, France (2013); and Kashya Hildebrand Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland (2012). 

Seeking unity and balance, the gestures found in Khaled Ben Slimane’s works punctuate laboured areas of the canvas with delicate overlaid text. Although the loose calligraphic style of repeated scriptures resembles graffiti, sacred invocations establish his paintings as exercises in spirituality much like Sufi hymns. The artist’s repetition of words is derived from the tradition of ceramics in Islamic art, which includes formal guidelines for the ornamentation of sacred and functional objects. Here text becomes akin to the geometric patterns that are symmetrically rendered as a representation of the divine order that governs the natural world. The creative freedom with which Slimane allows his text to travel across each painting stems from his research of various forms of mysticism, thus a process of transcendence is demonstrated through automatic forms. In the featured lot, the sanctified space created by incantations appears as a religious structure, depicting the immaterial architecture of devotion.

Internationally recognised as a painter, ceramist, and sculptor, Khaled Ben Slimane was born in 1951 in Sousse, Tunisia. Slimane pursued his initial artistic training at the Technological Institute of Art in Tunis, and the Escuela Massana of Barcelona, Spain, and has exhibited internationally since then. His work is held in private and public collections such as the British Museum, United Kingdom; the Smithsonian Institute, United States; Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah; and the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Japan; in addition to museums in the Netherlands, Australia, and Spain. 

Nja Mahdaoui, a celebrated master of the modern Hurufiyah aesthetic, maintains a diverse practice that includes painting, printmaking, sculpture, illustration, and tapestry design. With an interest in the non- objective nature of Arabic letters, Mahdaoui has broadly experimented with the formal properties of painting as texts are stripped of their original meaning through painstaking stylisation. Following in the tradition of historic Islamic calligraphers, Mahdaoui creates intricate compositions in which volume and depth are alluded with deliberate lines and carefully placed planes, arriving at what he refers to as ‘calligrams’ or ‘graphemes,’ imagery that holds the viewer’s gaze without literal meaning, allowing the mind to wander with the aid of sensory experience.

Born in Tunis in 1937, Nja Mahdaoui initially received his artistic training at Atelier Libre in Carthage, Tunisia. Subsequently travelling to Europe to further his studies, he specialized in graphic design at the Accademia Santa Andrea in Rome, and later graduated from the Ecole du Louvre in Paris, France in 1967. With a scholarship from the Tunisian government, he then attended the Cite Internationale des Arts. In the early 1970s, Mahdaoui worked under Iranian artist Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, a founder of the Saqqakhaneh School of painting and sculpture, which merged traditional forms, namely the motifs of Islamic art, with the experimentation of modernist aesthetics. The experience defined the next forty years of his creative output, as Mahdaoui became engrossed in the formalistic outcomes and conceptual possibilities of working with Arabic script.

Mahdaoui has participated in recent exhibitions at the British Museum, Hermitage Museum, Saatchi Gallery, and the French National Library. His works are housed in the British Museum, United Kingdom; the National Museum of Scotland; Institut du Monde Arabe, France; the Smithsonian Institute, United States; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Qatar; the Museum of Modern Art, Tunisia; Museum of Modern Art, Iraq; and the National Gallery of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; among other private and public collections. 

Aghighi seeks ‘viewers who are seeing and not reading,’ which is why her letters progressively transform into boldly coloured minimalist shapes, tearing through solid planes. Carefully interwoven, they give birth to geometrical shapes that acquire a multidimensional perspective, demonstrating Bakhshayeshi’s reinterpretation of calligraphy as a dynamic and contemporary art form that continues to yield invention.

Born in Qom, Iran in 1968, Aghighi is a descendent of historical court calligrapher Mirza Karim Khoshnevis Tabhari, and studied Kufi script with the renowned calligraphic master Nasrollah Afjei. She is recognised as the foremost female calligrapher among contemporary Iranian artists. Aghighi has participated in numerous exhibitions in Iran, India, Turkey, Lebanon, and Kuwait. Her works are housed in prestigious public collections such as the Malaysian Islamic Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran, where she lives and works today. 

Rachid Koraichi’s work is inspired by various types of calligraphy and the significations that can be unearthed when texts are transformed into new pictorial forms. Arabic calligraphy is frequently a starting point for the artist, as he applies a meditative process to executing his work, one derived from the practices that shaped his Sufi upbringing. Koraichi’s consideration of script as the basis for aesthetic experiments and conceptual strategies appears across diverse media, as the artist’s extensive oeuvre—created over the span of several decades—comprises ceramics, textiles, drawings, sculptures, paintings, and installations. Repetition and the artist’s limited palette maintain the focus on contemplation that is central to sacred imagery. At the same time, Korachi’s text-based works lead the viewer to pictorial spaces in which cosmic forces are described as operating in unison, a depiction of the world that is outwardly chaotic with limitless space and time yet anchored by visibly linked forms.

Born in Ain Beida, Algeria in 1947, Rachid Koraichi initially trained at the Institute of Fine Arts and the Superior National School of the Arts in Algeria. In 1971, Koraichi moved to France where he enrolled at National School of Decorative Arts, and later attended the School of Urban Studies, Paris. He is currently based between Tunisia and France.

Widely recognised as a leading North African artist, Koraichi’s works have been exhibited at international venues such as the British Museum (2006); the Museum of Modern Art, New York, United States (2006); the Venice Biennale (1999, 1997); and the Havana Biennial (1997). The artist’s solo shows include Cornell University, United States (2002); the National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman, Jordan (2002); Leighton House Museum, London, United Kingdom (1998); and Musee National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou (1991). Koraichi’s sculptures and paintings are housed in the British Museum; the National Museum for African Art, United States; and the Museum of Islamic Arts, Qatar; among other private and public collections. 

Although Iranian artist Ali Shirazi’s bold and dynamic canvases composed of Persian nasta’liq script are a testament to his classical training as a calligrapher, the artist’s work predominantly reflects his distinctly personal and contemporary interpretation of this traditional art form. These centered compositions, made up of tangled calligraphic forms, reference the Holy Quran, whose verses make up a prayer for God’s divine guidance. The highly symbolic colours of black and white signify purity, peace, and modesty in the Islamic faith, whereas the use of blue in Shirazi’s artwork is perceived as a symbol of protection.

Ali Shirazi was born in 1960 in Shiraz, Iran. He began training in calligraphy at the age of fourteen, obtaining a distinction from the Iranian Calligraphy Society. Shirazi went on to become the Head of the Isfahan Calligraphy Society, and is a member of the High Council of the Iranian Calligraphy Society. The artist’s works are held in various important private and public collections including the Islamic Culture and Communication Organization, the Imam Ali Museum of Tehran, the Tehran Quran Museum, the Sharjah Art Museum, and the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar. 

In addition to being widely known for his colorful ‘stencil’ paintings (in which he often appropriates then reinterprets imagery), Chant Avedissian has also produced a significant body of photographs, focusing on the details and patterns of architecture and craftsmanship—subjects he has long been concerned with in his canvases. Today he identifies most with the simplicity of Japanese art, an influence that is visible in the rich line work and deep colour saturation of his paintings, which have the appearance of woodblock prints. At the same time, the undeniable influence of popular culture and mass media places his works within the conceptual framework of postmodern aesthetics. Images are subjected to close scrutiny and the iconography of electronic and print media provide inspiration for new forms and a reconsideration of traditional approaches.

Born in Cairo in 1951, Chant Avedissian initially trained at the School of Art and Design in Montreal, graduating with a degree in Fine Art. After relocating to Paris in the mid 1970s, he studied printmaking at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs. Returning to Egypt in 1980, the artist worked alongside renowned architect Hassan Fathy for nearly a decade—a period that was crucial for the artist, as he began to study the traditional techniques and mediums of his birthplace. Under Fathy’s lead, Avedissian experimented with various materials while closely examining the visual culture of Egypt in both its past and present forms.

Having exhibited extensively, Avedeissian’s work is housed in the British Council of Cairo, Egypt; the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France; the British Museum, London, United Kingdom; the National Museum of Scotland; the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands; and the Smithsonian Institute and the headquarters of the World Bank in Washington DC, United States. 

Houssam Ballan’s canvases are informed by his accomplished technical abilities in calligraphy and sculpture—a diverse background that contributes to the artist’s frequent experimentation as he works intuitively while still painting from immediate observation. In the featured lot, an early painting by the artist, Ballan’s young protagonists are executed with close attention to detail, a form of realism that relies on painterly effects and meticulous line work to create a sculptural sense of figuration. As the bodies of his subjects are given dimensionality, Ballan renders their clothes as lines, patterns, and evident brushstrokes with a stylisation that alludes to the passage of time and the presence of an ongoing narrative, allowing his forms to serve as conceptual elements. The stoic yet melancholy boys of his painting, likely resemble figures painted from street scenes of his native Swaida, also remind the viewer of the youth of Gaza, who were subjected to the 2008/2009 war that left the territory in ruins.

Born in Swaida, Syria in 1983, Ballan graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus in 2005, where he has been a tutor and member of the Teacher’s Association since 2009. Between 1999 and 2007, Ballan participated in workshops with artist J. Bradley Adams and painter Jose Friexanes, and trained in mural painting with Pierre Palas. His first solo exhibition was held at Mark Hachem Gallery in Beirut (2014). The artist’s works have featured in various group exhibitions internationally. 

Iyad Dayoub’s expressionist paintings rely on colour and brushwork to communicate a stark sense of isolation that overwhelms his figures. Frequently depicted as solitary protagonists; couples that appear to collapse into one body; or parents protective of young children, Dayoub’s characters are placed in the centre of compositions so that expansive settings surround them. Rendered with vigorous brushstrokes and dramatic contrasts between highlights and shadows, these vacant domestic spaces suggest a heightened state of alienation confirmed by the slumped posture of his subjects. Despite the artist’s usage of warm hues, perceptible anxieties pervade each painting.

Born in Hama, Syria in 1984, Iyad Dayoub is a graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus (2006). Dayoub continued his studies at the University of Kiel, Germany, where he is currently based. He has participated in regional and international exhibitions at venues such as Art House, Damascus, Syria (2011) and Kaleemat Sanat Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey (2011). The artist’s works are housed in the private collection of Kaleemat Sanat Gallery, and the Jalanbo Collection, United States; among others.