Ayyam Gallery iterates the longstanding relevance of paper in latest exhibition

The development of paper, a ubiquitous contemporary material, traces back to Chinese official Cai Lun in the first century, who revolutionised its production. This special invention, tracing its roots to China, has, over the years, presented endless possibilities for painters, draftsmen, and printmakers, thus being a prominent canvas of the region’s art history. Leading arts organisation based in Dubai, Ayyam Gallery convenes a group of contemporary painters and artists who bring forth drawing and printmaking as the protagonist in their oeuvre for a collective exhibition on paper, dubbed In the Footsteps of Cai Lun II: Selected Works on Paper. On display from 18 May to 5 September, 2022, the conceptual art exhibition features paintings and artworks by Tammam Azzam, Nihad Al-Turk, Mohammad Bozorgi, Thaier Helal, Samia Halaby, Athier Mousawi, and Faisal Samra.

Texture provides a foothold for paper, a surface that is unpretentious. The included works give the viewers a glimpse of how drawings, whether created with graphite, charcoal, pastels, or monoprint techniques, lean on the fragile yet sturdy characteristics of this unassuming material. Recent works by Athier Mousawi, Nihad Al-Turk, Mohammad Bozorgi, Khaled Takreti, and Tammam Azzam reinforce the efficacy of paper in mirroring the implied materiality of an image, exemplifying a role the surface has played for centuries.

Beirut -based self-taught artist Nihad Al-Turk unveils the frenzied nature of his hand through his strenuous portraits of dissident Syrians, depicting stylized figures with exemplary dexterity using a ballpoint pen. Syrian artist Khaled Takreti puts oil on paper to compose intricate figures, leading to an artwork wherein the paper’s delicacy exudes serenity. Meanwhile, contemporary artist Tammam Azzam concocts black and white monoprints bearing a close resemblance to photographic negatives, morphing his familiar subject matter into sinister imagery that connotes an alarming sense of foreboding, as they were created shortly before the Syrian conflict.

Samia Halaby, a Palestinian artist, activist and scholar, expresses her fondness for the medium she has relied on for providing a space of experimentation, studies of colour, and spatial composition, early in her career. The selected works – a painted silkscreen and acrylic on paper – are testimonies of the adaptability of the medium. Along the similar lines, Athier Mousawi’s works investigate colour and spatial composition. Moustafa Fathi’s mixed media art on paper, although applied with a brush, are evocative of a monoprint technique that he based on research of textiles in his native Syria. Faisal and Thaier’s works primarily showcase paper’s malleability; the result is conceptual and encompasses gestural abstraction.

The exhibition ‘In the Footsteps of Cai Lun II: Selected Works on Paper’ will remain on display from May 18 – Sept 5 at Ayyam Gallery, Dubai.