Titled Unself, the second solo exhibition by artist Omnia Sayed was held at Albab Gallery at the Opera House (8-19 April). It includes 50 drawings and paintings on paper and canvas centred on the notion of looking for oneself and mirroring stages and psychological conflicts in the artist’s personal life.
Smaller portraits depict the artist at the most difficult time in her life, when she was hit by a car on her way back from the Faculty of Fine Arts, where she taught, in 2016. It damaged her spine, requiring year-long treatment and leaving her on a wheelchair.
Born in 1992, Sayed graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts’ Painting Department in 2014. She earned her MFA in 2023 from the same institution, where she currently works as a teaching assistant. Her acclaimed dissertation was on figure painting from ancient times to the present. Sayed is currently working on her PhD thesis, which focuses on self-portraits as self-therapy in the work of Egon Schiele.
The artist’s debut exhibition, Five Attempts to Survive, depicted the immediate trauma she felt as a result of the accident. Her spinal cord was shown in most of these paintings, coupled with cactus flowers.
Sayed started working on the present paintings in 2018 by sketching herself in the mirror. “It was on Wednesdays,” the title of one diptych, “that it got quite at home. As I stayed in bed for long hours, and with the mirror and my books on the desk in front of me, it felt like the scenes I saw of Frida Kahlo in her own room in the later phase of her life were repeated,” she said in an interview at the gallery.
Another interesting series of drawings uses medical prescriptions as the surface to draw on. The artist’s face emerges out of her name, hospital room number and the medications. “It was challenging to draw on the prescriptions. It was as if I decided to
draw a new phase of my life despite its direct connection with the memory of the painful accident,” she added.
Each of one group of drawings is named after colours that have a special meaning. Blue and green, which often refer to the sky and plants, assert the artist’s connection to nature. “Green and blue are my favorite colours. I live in an apartment that overlooks the Nile, I can also see the green of Al-Qorsaya island, and that is how I grew up loving nature.”
Estrangement and Death are two oil on paper paintings made on prescriptions. They show the artist’s sad eyes in black. Another interesting series of drawings, Silence, are variations on a self-portrait with a coloured space or a flower instead of the mouth, perhaps a gesture against loneliness and distress. Weeping, an eye-catching watercolour on paper, reveals the artist’s face against a blue background as if she is drowning in a sea of tears.
Finding a link between the human body and nature is one of the artist’s unique skills. Meditating on a landscape, watching birds and learning about their life and routines, how they eat and when they go to sleep, is one of her favourite pastimes. Here, the sunflower is the main element in many paintings. In The Red Sunflower, an oil on paper, the withering sunflower is seen against a red background, perhaps to bring some joy to the scene or to the artist’s heart.
“I caught myself taking a lot of pictures of sunflowers in different places, admiring their unique form and colours, and then I started to include them in almost all my paintings, starting with my free sketches with the One Shot outdoor sketching group back in 2015 and 2016, and then my participation in a group exhibition at Khan Al-Maghraby Gallery in 2018. Sometimes, the sunflower’s long stem reminds me of the skeleton of a human being, the leaves look like the arms, and the flower like the head. It feels like the flower is an intimate friend, offering love.”
Sunflower 1 depicts the artist’s face with her long brown hair at the bottom of the canvas, with a beautiful sunflower stemming from her head. In Sunflower 4, the most recent painting, the self-portrait is more like a sculpture, with some features from ancient Egyptian portraiture, which could be a turning point. “It was when I once looked in the mirror and noticed that my hair was longer and looked like one of [the ancient Egypt-obsessed designer and filmmaker] Shady Abdel Salam’s wig designs,” she smiled.
Another captivating painting on canvas is a self-portrait with a dove and a crescent on top of each other. The pyramidal composition is unique, however, and the scene looks gloomy and faintly lit by the crescent. “It was inspired by the long nights of rehabilitation at the hospital during the winter and autumn of 2016.”
Trees is divided into two vertical sections, with a self-portrait surrounded by green trees. “In spring, I had the opportunity to go down to my room and roam on the wheel chair in the rehabilitation centre garden. It was when I felt the blooming of flowers again as if I was starting a new phase in my life. This is how this became so personal.” In the Moonlight shows the artist, now with her full body, sleeping in the shadow of a sunflower.
The exhibition tour ends with a series of small images showing the artist in a state of relative recovery. “Most of these were made during the first and second waves of Covid, when I was obliged once again to stay at home, this time healthier and more resilient.”
Sayed isn’t sure if she wants to keep making self-portraits. “It was one of the interesting subjects that I studied thoroughly at the faculty from both the psychological and philosophical standpoint. And I want to contribute something to this genre.”
Sayed has participated in a number of group exhibitions and international events, including Luxor International Symposium for Painting in 2020. Seeing ancient temples like Karnak inspired her to use the lotus flower as a motif and paint eyes in a distinctive way. She also benefited from studying Frida Kahlo’s biography, with which she feels a strong connection.
“Sometimes I feel I am just a contemporary version of Kahlo,” she smiles. “However, Kahlo’s expression is stronger, because she was a self-taught artist, well-connected to herself and more courageous in breaking artistic rules. As an academic artist, I am hesitant when it comes to exploring unacademic techniques. It takes time to get the courage needed for free expressionism.”
The artist is currently working on a new collection, again on the spinal cord. In 2023, she participated in the Youth Salon at the Arts Palace with a large painting, Roots, depicting her spinal cord stretching over the houses of Al-Qorsaya. “The upcoming collection will tackle the same theme in a surrealist way. The journey to self-love has just started.”
* A version of this article appears in print in the 5 June, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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