An Egyptian visual artist who was born in Alexandria, 1990, Imane currently lives and works in Cairo. She possesses an MFA in painting from the faculty of fine arts in Alexandria 2016.
She mainly uses painting, drawing, and text in her art practice where her interests approach the intersections between mathematics and visual arts. She has experimented digital painting, photography, performance, and installation. Her first solo show was held at townhouse gallery in Cairo, 2018, She exhibited widely locally and internationally, her work has been exhibited in Lebanon, Morocco, the gallery of Vargas Jose Maria University in Florida (USA). Her paintings are part of private collections in Egypt, Lebanon, Germany and USA.
Above Horizon and Beyond
True Horizon is a theoretical line that surrounds the observer as a circle, which is drawn on the surface of a perfectly spherical model of a stellar object. To the painter, an open space’s Visible Horizon is besieged by the frame of a painting dimensions, where the curvature of the Earth intersects obstructions with the sky. The role of a landscape artist is to process, in a specific moment and point, the components of a particular event. Getting inspired by optical illusions, and playing with mind games, might urge the possibility to question aesthetics.
While observing open spaces, I’m fully surrounded by air and water in certain occasions. The artist in me is memorizing the best ways to capture angles, then she decides to inhibit, enhance, or completely erase objects on a blank canvas.
Among what lies above and below Horizon, and what may take place in between, or what can entirely obscure its existence; my landscapes in this exhibit are picturing symbols from nature, by enduring some resemblance to the past.
Taking to water
Mai Elwakil
Born and raised in Alexandria, Imane Ibrahim never took to the sea. It did not feature in her early introspective figurative paintings. Her personal associations with entering this massive body of water were, in fact, negative. A few years after moving to Cairo, Ibrahim began practicing swimming. Within the controlled parameters of a swimming pool, she found a different way to connect with herself and her surroundings. Her bodily senses slowed down to adapt. So did her perception, to make sense of that which is below the line separating the water world from what lies above. Bubbles—one of the paintings in this new series—is exactly that. To share her experience, Ibrahim teases our instinctive understanding of space and depth. She uses intense color blocks and flowy brush strokes to play with the form and position of the traditional horizon line.
This titular line is the crux of Ibrahim’s show. Trained as a painter, who has spent years researching and conversing with 20th century Egyptian masters, Ibrahim has adopted abstraction as a concept and method in her work. Her interest in mathematics motivates her to further push in that direction, exploring the traditions of academic painting, unrestrained. She abstracts visual elements to simplify and test conceptual parameters before complicating the premise once more with experiences that are intimate and relatable. This was evident in The Booklet of Riddles Series (2015-2020) that took the form of mathematical problems, mini stories and painterly diagrams. It manifests in Above Horizon and Beyond as Ibrahim explores how reexperiencing the traditional subject of landscapes from within a swimming pool can be presented on the canvas plane.
A fresh encounter with a traditional subject is what Ibrahim seeks to share through Above Horizon and Beyond. She presents a supposedly familiar world a new. This world is vast and deep, extending beyond the plane of the canvas. It flows and envelops viewers. I cannot fully discern where I am by looking at the manifestations of this world’s sand, seas and sky, nor am I able to understand the weight of my presence in relation to Ibrahim’s landscapes. The emotions are engulfing, as she lets me in on her process to present an ideal aesthetic possibility.
Night View I