ARABECEDAIRE, Hamed Abdalla
Author CINEMETEQUE
Nous sommes venus en famille, de la grand-mère aux petits-enfants, ce jeudi 12 avril 2018, voir l'exposition de mon père Hamed Abdalla (1917-85), artiste-peintre égyptien, à The Mosaic Rooms, un centre d'Arts dirigé par notre ami Omar al-Qattan à Londres. Nous sommes guidés dans cette exposition, entre tableaux et archives, par son concepteur, notre ami Morad Montazami, historien de l'art, curateur au Tate Modern et directeur des éditions Zamân Books, sur une danse improvisée de Zosia Jo, artiste freelance.
FIlmé et monté par Samir ABDALLA, juin 2018.
Hamed Abdalla (1917-1985) is an influential painter in Egyptian modernism. Self-taught, he had established himself as an artist by his early 20’s. Frustrated by the political climate of his native country, Abdalla left Egypt to continue his career in Copenhagen during the 1960s. Here he crossed paths with artists associated with the CoBrA movement before he moved to France. Linking the origins of his abstract works to Islamic traditions and calligraphy, Abdalla explored the concept of the ‘creative word’ or ‘talisman’, the combination of a written word, a body shape and an abstract form, upon the canvas. In his work he reflected on the political change of the time, alongside his research into the visual ideas. Curator Morad Montazami notes ‘Abdalla represents a prolific “archive” for different genealogies of trans-arab and Mediterranean modernities.’
Morad Montazami is an art historian and curator. His research interests are cosmopolitan modernisms and histories of the avant-garde between trans-Arab, Iranian and Mediterranean zones. He has published essays on Farid Belkahia, Bahman Mohassess, Behjat Sadr, Mohamed Melehi, Mehdi Moutashar, Latif Al Ani, among others. He curated the exhibitions Bagdad Mon Amour at Institut des cultures d’Islam, Paris, opening March 2018, Fugitive Volumes and Faouzi Laatiris: Catalogue déraisonné at the Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rabat (2016) and co-curated the exhibition Unedited History: Iran 1960-2014 at Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris and MAXXI, Rome (2014). He is the director of Zaman Books Publishing and its related journal Zamân. Montazami is currently working as a research curator at Tate Modern, London.
