La Danse du Soir, 2021, by Lebanese artist Sara Abou Mrad is part of a series of paintings titled Matilda, which explores the dreamlike worlds of femininity, sensuality, and eroticism. This piece is dominated by vibrant green tones and deep blues framing the central scene, in which three nude female figures are floating. Another three anthropomorphic figures, half lions, half man, painted in cobalt blue, hover on cloudlike platforms, while white birds with luminescent candles are dispersed across the painting. In the upper section, a group of churches surrounded by crosses planted in the ground hint at a cemetery. The bottom part of the painting shows a small village, planted upon the surrounding hillside along with another more condensed town, which seems to be built upon an island in the sea with boats around it.

In this allegorical work, the artist extends to the viewer something pertaining to the sensorial and the spiritual through her use of symbolic representations. Matilda, the protagonist of many of the artist’s pieces, symbolizes female sensuality and fragility, and is represented here in her purest form: nude and untethered, capable of intimate communion with the creatures around her. In La Danse du Soir, femininity is at the forefront: Matilda is depicted as completely unrestricted, the anthropomorphic lion-like male figures are an unaggressive predator, and the birds as bearers of serenity. This dreamscape provides a space where the boundaries and barriers that constrain sensual expression in all its forms remain at the edges of the piece.

Abou Mrad makes use of symbols and recurring figures such as anthropomorphic beings, crosses, and nature, which she employs to portray these realities as belonging to the world of dreams and imagination. By immersing Matilda - nude, bearing an anatomically imprecise body - in a field of surrealistic scenes, Abou Mrad allows the multifaceted expression of the feminine alter ego who expresses eroticism in an elegant, unconventional way. As Matilda is the symbol that allows the visual representation of Abou Mrad’s dreamscapes, she is also the symbol of a fleeting moment, like the instant just after one wakes up and attempts to grasp the last memories of the fading dream.  

signed front lower right and reverse with title, dimensions, city, medium, and description in french.