Q0DE Art Space's stand for Egypt Int'l Art Fair 2022 focuses exclusively on emerging artists based in Jordan and Palestine.
Sondos Abu ElAdas and SalahEddin AlQawasmi both work primarily in the medium of oil, expressing their techniques differently.
AlQawasmi follows the surrealist technique of automatic drawing, in which conscious control over the hand surrendered - allowing the unconscious of leaking through. While this introduces elements of chance, randomness, and even chaos into the artwork, the artist follows through by elaborating these psychic marks into fuller scenes. More identifiable details appear, but they still retain an ambiguous character. Various biomorphic forms loosely evoking nature are paired with suggestions of interior spaces to give the pieces the uncertain quality of a misremembered dream.
While Abu ElAdas art displays several expressive faces, each expresses a different emotion. She feels connected to everything that contains human figures; through her artworks, she tries to express other emotions and hidden anger representing it with faces bearing sad feelings, but in a sarcastic theme.
To Abu ElAdas, sarcasm is a technique that developed with her through years of practicing, which helped her express what she wanted through her artworks. Furthermore, sarcasm in the paintings makes them more appealing to the public and relieves the melancholy and sorrow.
She emphasizes the eyes in her work since she considers them the mirror of emotions and feelings. Deviating and out of the ordinary and strangeness in painting pushes the artist to express her feelings more.
Saver Jalal is a sculptor and painter. He had a passion for art at an early age. However, he discovered his artistic talent after working for four years under the late Iraqi artist Rafa Nasiri and Iraqi painter and sculptor Dia Al-Azzawi. This experience has raised a significant impact on his entry into the world of art from its most expansive doors.
Jalal defines art as a person's creative expression of something unique and one-of-a-kind. It depicts the artist's inner feelings as he expresses himself through sculpting, drawing, and design.
His everyday presence in his carving, painting, and design workshops, cutting scrap iron, scraps of used wood, and drawing and designing decorative maps inspires him to create art pieces.
Jalal's art style depends on the dynamics of movement in static art. Most of his artworks are liner and geometric due to his work designing and implementing engineering maps and interior decoration.
His artistic work reflects his unique approach to working with various materials to create unique and uncommon pieces that incorporate intellectual and aesthetic elements into creative compositions while attracting the audience.
Mustafa Ilktefan works with charcoal, oil, and acrylic; he is known for his bold color and satirical portrayal of characters.
The Figures in his paintings frequently appear as if they are being watched, as if they are being held captive like things; his artworks have a sense of humor and an abstracted feeling of empathy or sensitivity.
Part of his artwork imitates a story based on indirect messages to give the audience space to think. But, on the other hand, other paintings are just aesthetic.
Mattar Odeh has been passionate about art and painting since childhood; he has always found wonder and inspiration through art. His mother was the one who first exposed him to art, which he subsequently developed into love.
Odeh became oblivious to everything around him, preferring to escape reality via daydreaming. The quiet observation of singularity went hand in hand with this procedure.
Most of his works are represented in bold colors that reflect daily situations and personal conflicts that he is aware of, which he purifies via a sequence of paintings.
In addition, he uses abstractions as a theme to his artworks, and he also paints abstract portraits as an alternative pathway to express his feelings.
Odeh examines paradoxical topics in human nature via abstractions, such as the human desire to complicate circumstances in their life.
The surrealistic answers can identify Rani Sharabati's work to questions and issues of daily Palestinian citizens since the Nakba, which was a turning point to the Palestinian scene.
Rani highlights those questions and complexes in his work to push the society to engage and make changes to the stereotypical image of Palestine nowadays by raising awareness and influencing the viewer by shedding light on issues that the community and individuals are reluctant to perceive.
From a young age, his artistic endeavors began by rearranging and changing the images around him to prove that the typical idea isn't beauty.
He began to draw using his imagination of the various roads and scenes while passing through the Palestinian cities because of his continuous movement between them and producing them in his sights, visions, and aspirations by formulating these images and the impact on his compositions. He always saw art as a place to be free to experiment with what he thinks or imagines.
Reem Natsheh works based on the revival mythological and traditional Palestinian folk stories she told as a child growing up in Al-Khalil. Those stories with her imagination and visual memory combined now as an adult has formed Reem's muses which can be described as naive and primitive art in a contemporary dialogue.
She tends to stimulate a state of curiosity and childish astonishment in her works; she began her journey with an attempt to use abstract figures in a void, but that has changed as the figures got cluttered and the world got distanced. Those figures are now floating kinetically on the broad canvas with vivid bright colors.
Reem communicates with her audience by curiosity and childish amazement. She thinks what motivates us as humans and identifies with this wonder a natural state of serenity that is not tainted by movement or disturbed by a noise, represented by a calm smile confronted with the chaos of the surrounding world.
Reem believes that art is a tool to contribute to overall health and development by highlighting different issues and giving thoughtful critique to them.
Reem's concept developed from being a Palestine in closed borders, experiencing the daily life of being a Palestinian individual behind the wall.
Haya's portraits of Palestinian women characterize the close family bonds and female companionship prevalent in Middle Eastern society. She consciously chooses to diverge from the stock image of the traditional Palestinian woman olive-picking in an embroidered robe to show modern women at home in a comfortable urban setting. There is a sense of warmth and female solidarity, yet the eyes and faces of these women imply deep emotions running below the surface. Inspired by true tales of women's lives described by friends or family, Haya imagines the details of these stories and attempts to depict the women involved and their feelings.
The dark shadows of birds in Haya's pictures symbolize the search for freedom and the dreams of change inspired by Palestinian women in the face of both a dominant patriarchal society and the Israeli occupation.
