Art Alert: Hossam Dirar’s hand-painted vintage photographs of Cairo at Soma Gallery
Ahram Online, Monday 29 Jan 2018
The collection of images takes as its starting point the Description de l’Égypte, published in several volumes between 1809 and 1829.


Artist Hossam Dirar's exhibition Le Caire 1801, featuring fine-art photography from the 19th century that has been hand-painted, will open at Soma Gallery on 4 February.

The collection takes as its starting point the Description de l’Égypte, published in several volumes between 1809 and 1829. Dirar revisits the imagery that documented but also fed orientalist views of Egypt in the 19th century.

The exhibition statement describes Dirar’s work as “a re-interpretation of Egypt’s rich visual heritage, overlapping between the multi-cultural character of Cairo, the city’s complex and ever-expanding urban façade, the region’s traditional iconography and the influence of contemporary media in shaping cultural referents.”

Dirar was selected by Saatchi in 2014 as one of 12 emerging artists of great promise.

Born in 1978, Dirar is a graduate of the Helwan Applied Arts Faculty. He currently moves between his base in Cairo and Barcelona, where he is studying art.

He works in painting, photography, installation, video and graphics. In addition to several solo shows in Cairo, Dirar’s work was shown in group exhibitions in Bahrain, Ireland, Slovakia, Germany, France, Italy, Austria and South Africa.

Programme:
The exhibition opens on Sunday 4 February at 7pm and runs till 22 February
Soma Art School & Gallery, 3 Al-Adel Abou Bakr Square, 3rd floor, Apt. 9, Zamalek, Cairo



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