New Horizon - mythological paintings by Amal Nasr
The imaginative powers of Amal Nasr knows no bounds. Alexandrian Amal’s latest works are a timeless fusion of disparate spiritual, mythological, cultural and historical facets and features drawn from prehistoric, Babylonian, Pharaonic, Greco-Roman, Coptic, Eurasian, and Egyptian civilizations and beyond, which she adeptly amalgamates into her own tapestries that delve into her yearning and searching for ever newer horizons.
There is a constant quest to restore the joy of discovery and the pleasure of the first experience and the passion of moving to another, more astonishing and attractive horizon. It is what keeps our hearts alive instead of being killed by the monotony of habit. So was my moving to a sprawling dream, and I found it in my new painting experience which is inspired by the world of primitive art and ancient civilizations that have always fascinated me and which I found my soul drawn to.
The common denominator between these arts is the unity of the human spirit and its perplexity in confronting the world with its unknown forces and unjustified phenomena. The ages of humanity’s virginity, its initial instinct and its visual expression of the unknown, from a time when everything around man was new, enjoying the beauty of discovering and interpreting the initial step in everything. Each morning brings a new discovery that is in direct harmony with nature, and as man faced these new unknowns, drawing was his first language. Even older than the practice of speaking and writing, drawing is perhaps the most primitive instinct. For how to confront the unknown, other than by embodying it, confronting it, and surpassing it.
Man found that he had something to narrate and that his experiences that began to accumulate gave him the ability to make events and stories and mix between imagination and reality, because his mind was taking him to horizons beyond his limited spatial spot. He does not place the imaginary difference, which we have invented in our contemporary life, between him and the creatures, therefore he depicts his new creatures that mix between humans, reptiles, birds, fish and animals; He may choose from each of them the part that is capable of escaping and confronting. He also does not place a barrier between the living and the dead, for the ancestral spirits are still present, he reproduces them, embodies them, and is empowered by them. He makes totems and taboos, and reveres magicians, priests, and everything he believes has the ability to penetrate the unknown. I contemplated the vocabulary of the ancient arts until my memory was saturated with them, and when I begin my work the vocabulary begins to flow, mixed with the new formulas that my imagination has performed on it.
I was inspired by strange spirits in its innate formulation of beings and mixed between them without any restrictions. I collected them in a unifying theatrical performance that contains the vocabulary of primitive and ancient civilizations from various sources that come together forming a new horizon. Lascaux cave fishermen converse with indigenous Australian figures, Maya and Aztec sculptures converse with Jordan’s two-headed Ain Ghazal statues, Greek Aphrodite contend with Assyrian Ishtar and Venus of Willendorf, pre-dynastic boats still capable of transporting us to new lands, ivory Greek statues conversing with Naqada brides of ancient Egyptian and Syrian women, and the Alexandrian women of Tanagra. The nymphs from the Odessa epic warning the ships, the gazing eyes of Coptic Fayum portraits, and the ancient zodiac vocabulary still drawing us the maps of time. I am always continuing in my search for new horizons amongst the messages of our ancestors, spirits alive inside us that we can gain new sparks of life from, knowing that preserving the pureness of our souls is what preserves the secret of life.
Amal Nasr is a Professor in and Head of the Department of Photography, Faculty of Fine Arts, Alexandria University in Egypt. She is also a photographer and a critic. Her work has been exhibited in 14 solo exhibitions in Egypt and abroad. Nasr is also a member of several art associations and has served on the juries for many artistic and critical contests. She has represented Egypt in many international exhibitions and events in Italy, France, China, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, and the UK. Nasr has participated in international conferences and meetings in the Arab world and written numerous books and articles. She is the winner of several awards, including Egypt’s Youth Salon Award for painting in 1990 and for photography in 1993, the State Creativity Award in 1998, and the State Incentive Award in plastic art criticism in 2011.
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