Displayed at Motion Art Gallery in Zamalek, the 15 medium to large paintings making up Rania Abu El Azm’s latest exhibition, Free Roots, evoke landscapes full of flora. In Abu El Azm’s trademark geometric strokes, trees appear as asymmetrical lines, reflecting life below as above ground.

“After long stretches of meditation on nature during my travels,” Abu El Azm told me, “I came to realise that all things move.” Hence the way she describes roots: everything changing; nothing is still. The artist meditates daily as part of her practice. Her work is usually inspired by specific scenes she encountered in real life.

Born to two artists, Abu El Azm initially eschewed this career path, seeking a career in tourism because of her love of travelling. But by 2006 she had graduated from the painting department of the Faculty of Fine Arts, where she now teaches; she earned a PhD on the work of Mounir Kanaan in 2021.

The paintings on display took four years to complete. “It started in 2020, during the pandemic. All entertainment outlets were closed, so I resorted to open spaces and what landscapes could be found nearby. Watching plants, I started to see how like us they are: from glowing green to brown ash, their life cycle is not so different from ours.”

When she took part in the Luxor International Symposium for Painting later in 2020, Abu El Azm was fascinated by nature there. “The hot air balloon experience was amazing: to see the city abstracted into lines. This inspired the first painting in this collection, a bird’s eye view of Luxor.”

Also in 2020, Abu El Azm took part in the Udaipur International Painting Symposium in India where, inspired by the landscape of western India, she was motivated to go on working in the same vein. Three patches evoke three women in mourning in one large acrylic and oil on wood that recalls the mural known as “Mourning Women” in the tomb of the ancient Egyptian Vizier Ramose in Luxor. Brown, yellow and black evoke death and decay. It was inspired by the sight of dying palm trees on the Green Belt Road.

“Part of the arable land had been turned to asphalt,” she explains, “and the palm trees began to turn grey, then black. It was sad, but I was fascinated by the fact that all living things wither and die in almost the same way.”

Free Roots is Abu El Azm’s third exhibition. Her last, Barcode, held in 2018 at the Itijah Hall on the Opera House grounds, was of still lives. The way she painted them, inanimate objects seemed to come to life. “I’ve always imagined that chairs and kitchen utensils have characters and feelings,” she says. In both exhibitions she shows a unique ability to explore the unity of all things.

Instead of sketches, Abu El Azm layers acrylic on wood before she starts using oils. In some paintings she adds sand to background layers for texture. This contrast between thick and soft layers gives the paintings a distinctive richness. It takes her months to complete a painting: “I believe paintings too have the freedom to develop according to their own laws.”

In many paintings she introduces a foreground element: a human eye, a hand, or a flower. This takes away from the power of the strokes. But in almost every painting a unique balance is maintained. Displayed in the middle of the hall is a polyester ball painted in the same technique. It attracted the attention of visitors and stressed the exhibition’s theme. “Painting intersecting strokes on a ball was much harder,” Abu El Azm says, “because of the curved surface.”

The ball recalls the painter’s participation in the Burullus Painting Workshop, where she painted a small boat in the same way. Other balls were recently shown in the Azad Gallery’s art week at Zed Park. Her next project might include painting on cloth or three-dimensional objects.

Experimenting with new materials and new ways of expression is Abu El Azm’s strength. “Art,” she says, “is the documentation of feelings and images, and the exploration of new ways to play.”

* A version of this article appears in print in the 11 July, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly