Figure/Ground: Four women and their surroundings

April 20 to May 14, 2006

The figure/ground relationship is one of the basic rules of perception. The premise of the rule is that the figure in a painting or photograph is perceived as a structured entity over a shapeless background. Despite the totality of an image being visible to us, our perception focuses on the subject and accords it specificity, while viewing the ground as a generic, inactive and secondary compositional entity.

Artists Arwa Abouon, Doa Aly, Rana El Nemr and Mona Marzouk, each in their way re-visit the figure/ground relationship and give it new meaning in order to 'activate' the ground both perceptually and conceptually as an entity that shapes and is shaped by the figure. Indeed, the exhibition seeks to reveal the ground as anything but generic, exposing surroundings that are culturally loaded, gendered and sexually charged.

Arwa Abouon: Born in Libya of Tunisian and Libyan parents, Arwa Abouon grew up in Canada. Through her playful photographs she questions her own place within a so-called Western culture on the one hand, and her upbringing in a Muslim household on the other. The work featured in this exhibit is as much a subversion of ideas of nostalgia and the diasporic longing for home, as a homage to the trans-generational transmission of ‘traditional' values. Arwa camouflages her models in patterned veils blending them into a similarly patterned backdrop.

Doa Aly: Born and based in Cairo, Doa Aly's large-scale paintings refer to a dislocated anatomy. Lost, isolated and rigid bodies, float outside of their context as geometric shapes on solid bright backgrounds. Glossy abstracted larynxes, kneecaps, pelvic bones as well as displaced silhouettes of female figures occupy and seem to move across non-spaces. Like oscillating geometric gymnastics, Aly's vivid, hard edge compositions seem to imply a controlled, pre· determined, repetitive and limited movement of bodies within their surroundings.

Rana El Nemr: Photographer Rana El Nemr will be presenting her series of portraits of Cairo subway commuters. This body of work documents the rich and diverse human fabric of the megalopolis, and how Cairoans deal with their densely populated and over-urbanized environment through candid snapshots.

Mona Marzouk: Alexandria's Mona Marzouk will be presenting paintings from her series The Morphologist and the Architect. This body of work consists of high contrast, two-color, graphic compositions of biomorphic creatures that merge human forms with architectural elements. Multi mamma led, multi-domed bright colored silhouettes float on vibrant backgrounds conjuring up notions of intimacy associated with the body and interiors versus the inherently public function of architecture.