Mohammed Abla, an Egyptian artist who is celebrated in his home country for his innovation, daring ideas and for experimenting with various themes and technique to come up with exciting new works is showcasing his works in the city at the Art Gallery, IIC Annexe.
The exhibition titled ‘Egyptian Folk Tales’ is an exhibition of fantasy stencils and collage based mono-prints. The exhibition brings together a collection of mono- and polychromatic cutouts, monochromatic prints and oil paintings. The works have unique characters like birds, animals, children playing or dancing as cut-outs and are put together to tell a story that is open to the viewer's interpretation. Abla uses the technique of shadow puppetry with figures cut-out in black or coloured paper.
Born in 1953 in Belqas, Mansoura, Abla graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Alexandria. Starting in 1977, he spent seven years in Europe studying and practising art. The Nile and nature in general are principal themes in Abla’s paintings and graphics. “Through my career,” Abla says, “I have worked on the concept of art as an approach to play and vice versa. I have learned a lot of techniques, but all the time there was a parallel path through which I tried to deconstruct all that I had been taught, and specifically any seriousness about art schools or trends. I was keen on dealing with art as fun and play.”
Talking about how he came up with his current series, Alba says he used a scissors to cut out his characters.
A few days later, he started to put some of these together to create a scene, or rather a painting and then one painting led to another. “There were no specific stories in my mind while I was cutting out the figures,” he confesses.
