Art works since 1990
Artistic Statement
Title: The Creative Mind within Ready-Made Frameworks
Type of Work: Performance Art
Participants: Dr. Reem Hassan – Alia El-Gready – Fatma Ismail
Venue: The Palace of Arts, Zamalek, Cairo
Year: 1994
Context: As part of the project "The Relationship Between the Critic and the Artist"
Conceptual Vision
This performance marked one of the earliest serious attempts in the Egyptian art scene to interrogate the intersection between critical discourse and creative practice. Staged as a live performance workshop, the piece intertwined thought, the body, and visual experimentation. The Creative Mind within Ready-Made Frameworks stood at the threshold between the "fixed" and the "mutable" in artistic perception, opening a dialectical space that reexamines the complex dynamics between the artist, the critic, and cultural institutions.
Structure of the Performance
The performance unfolded in three main stages:
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Transmission: Representing the influence of pre-existing critical discourse in steering the creative process.
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Preparation: A moment of inner conflict between individual consciousness and collective heritage, where resistance or assimilation takes shape.
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Execution: The final stage, where creation manifests within imposed limitations—visually charged with tension and exposure.
Historical Significance
This performance is considered one of the foundational experiments in performance art in Egypt, characterized by its engagement with:
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Feminist and collaborative frameworks within artistic production.
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A critical examination of the symbolic authority of academic critique.
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A pioneering use of performance as a semiotic and analytical practice that seeks not only to shape form, but to dismantle the very mechanics of creativity itself.
Title: A Future Vision
"Dialectics of Form and Color: Abstract Visions from the 1990s"
Year : 1996
Evant : Salon of Youth - Cairo .
Introduction:
This body of work represents a rich exploratory phase in my artistic journey, during which I sought to deconstruct and reconstruct the relationship between form and color, abstraction and symbolic expression. Throughout this period, I endeavored to articulate a visual language that reflects the dynamic interaction between organic and geometric elements, creating compositions that celebrate motion, energy, and transformation.
Artistic Vision:
This project emerges from an in-depth investigation into Arab abstraction and visual modernity, drawing inspiration from the latent rhythms found in architecture, miniature painting, and organic forms. The works are not merely reflections of psychological or philosophical states, but rather an attempt to construct a visual architecture that transcends conventional perceptions of space and mass—an architecture that evokes a sense of fluidity, layering, and interconnection.
My Artistic Journey Through Drawing
My artistic practice is rooted in a deep exploration of the relationship between material and visual expression. I work to investigate the interplay of light and shadow, texture and void, in order to construct scenes that transcend conventional form, opening toward an abstract space rich in interpretive possibilities.
In these works, charcoal emerges as my primary medium on paper—a material I engage for its inherent ability to produce a visual spectrum that spans from fluidity to intensity, from fullness to emptiness. Through dragging, erasing, and scratching, visual narratives emerge—entwining memory with emotion, as though they are the lingering traces of deeply felt moments.
These artistic experiments reflect an inclination toward probing the sensory and emotional dimensions of form through monochromatic or limited color palettes. Black, gray, and deep brown function as expressive elements, charged with a dramatic depth that echoes inner reflection and the ongoing tension with time and space.
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