From March 25 till April 30, 2010, Ayyam gallery Damascus will proudly present the solo exhibition of artist Asma Fayoumi. A long established female painter who is based in Damascus, Fayoumi has been crucial to the development of Syrian art for over four decades. Her upcoming show with Ayyam will reaffirm her importance to the regional art scene with an exciting new body of work.
A recent series comprised of several large acrylic on canvas works extends her continued interest in depicting the world around her. Not shying away from difficult subjects, a number of these new compositions show oversized forms that are surrounded by whirlwinds of color, as though engulfed by an insurmountable force. Solemn women come to characterize the state of mankind, as tragedy continues to unfold across the globe. Following in a tradition that dates backs to early Arab modernism in which political struggles for independence or the assertion of national identities were often articulated with women as symbolic representations of a people, it’s as though Fayoumi’s work has come full circle, returning to the powerful signifiers that first established her as one of the region’s most intuitive observers.