ARTIST PROFILE: AHLAM ABBAS

Biography: 

Ahlam Abbas is an artist from South Lebanon. Having a Master of Fine Arts from the Lebanese University, she is currently pursuing her studies to obtain a PhD in Art and Humanities from Lebanese University. She has had the pleasure to participate in many local, regional, and international art exhibitions around the world. Part of her passion is to spread art and culture by teaching Arts in universities and institutes in Lebanon. She is a Member of the Lebanese Syndicate of Plastic Artists since 2013, and a Member of “Laaps Art” - The Lebanese Artists Association for Painters & Sculptors, Beirut, Lebanon since 2004.

She was awarded the Artists Prize at LAAPS, 2016. She is very active in promoting art through her work among the public within the country, around the Middle East and in Europe. Ahlam still finds the time and quiet to create her art, which focuses on the subject of the personality of an Arab individual living an ordinary life. While she is creating her illustrations of the Arab individual and her interactions within the rich Arabic society, she is still able to hold on to the characters from the past by simplifying their images as caricatures of popular and naive art to portray the current times.

Ahlam Abbas

Works of Ahlam Abbas:

Robex art vs corona 

2020-50x70cm-Tissue paper and various materials on Canson paper

The Hoopoe

100x90cm-acrylic on canvas

In the Presence of Matisse

100x90cm- acrylic on wood

In the Presence of Matisse 2

70x60cm-Tissue paper and acrylic on wood

Who am I

50x70cm -Tissue paper and various materials on Canson paper

Ahlam was paired with Sonia and to read the poem "Ignite" that was inspired by these art works, visit Sonia Dogra.

Artist Statement:

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist”. Pablo Picasso

My art is my voice, a powerful interpretation of my deepest thoughts, hidden emotions and strongest desires in an innate artistic way. The images I create are coined from personal experiences, fears, and interests, life stories and humanitarian issues. These ideas and experiences are better perceived through drawings rather than spoken words so that it reaches all the recipients of art and at all cultural levels.

My illustrative collages are everyday objects that I personally choose because of their simple appearance and deep complexity. I like the challenge of trying to capture the definition of an object and accurately translating the lines, shapes, light, tint and proper value levels onto a material in keeping with the innately primitive and Popular Art. 

"Ahlam Yoga" is a collection of paintings executed using the style and technique of innate art, in which the artist pleads with the spirituality of meditative transcendence, sublimation over the physical, sensual, and direct reality by returning to nature and beyond nature. 

The paintings are done with coloring sessions and in an innovative style. At times, they evoke the sessions of artist Matisse, and at other times, they express an idea, all of this away from the diseases, the revolutions and the absence of dear ones. Isn't Matisse who said: “All art worthy of the name is religious.” 

 

Bird symbolism in my paintings are more of queries - Are they migratory birds that did not find the time and place as it was in earlier childhood? Are they birds of peace and safety away from the knocking of corruption and war? Are they birds of love and intimacy?! It is a noble spiritual friendship flying in the sky and in the sincere past. Some of what we need after life's hustle and bustle.

It is my feeling that art should be a journey of interest, a look inside a person, and somehow touch the human experience. That’s why my art does not have a sophisticated agenda. I paint straight from my soul, my childhood memory and in the style of the painters I love and who I am influenced by and their schools like Rafiq Sharaf, Abu Sobhi El Tinawy, Hassan El Sharq, Picasso and Matisse. I create art simply hoping that my work will make people feel engaged, happy, reflective, or joyful. I want viewers to see what I see, the joy of life, which even strangely appears at the worst and happiest moments in life, in a mature and yet childish manner and involving techniques such as collage with paper and tissue paper.

Instagram: @ahlamabbas

Art & Poem

Video by Anoushka Sunil

Intro clip and thumbnail- Vibhin P C

Introduction video

Video edit by Anoushka Sunil

Intro clip and thumbnail- Vibhin P C

CURATOR'S TIDBITS:

Ahlam Abbas from Beirut is paired with Sonia Dogra from Delhi. Ahlam was part of my 2016 exhibition 'Repercussions' as well. She is living in a city that is already in turmoil and distress even before the pandemic began. A beautiful city on the way to ruins by vested interest. It was a task for Ahlam even to film her introduction video as she was residing in her village at the time. She had to travel to the city just to film it and send since she didn’t have Wi-Fi in the village and yet she managed to do so. Sonia is from the land of deodars and Ruskin Bond. If you notice, Ahlam and Sonia have a child-like charm to them! Their eyes sparkle and their smile is pure joy. They have a naïve energy about them that makes their work adorable and elevated. Ahlam’s works are collages and she layers it with paper, tissues and in some earlier works with found elements. There’s a seeming simplicity to both their works but when you observe carefully you will find geographies present there – literally and metaphorically. I found Sonia through ‘Unlocked – Historical Tales in verse’ that she describes as “lyrically rekindles your love for history”. The simplicity of language and yet the value that it adds particularly to children who find history unbearable is what caught my attention.