Rania El Hakim

Review: Kamal Khalifa Gallery, Monoprints, Rania El Hakim

A new show by Rania El-Hakim opens at Kamal Khalifa Gallery, Gezira Arts Centre. Simply entitled 'Monoprints' the new works try to capture the 'melange of relationships' encapsulated in the City, relationships that create the energy and vibrancy one may feel simply by walking down a street. El-Hakims Monoprints in this sense share themes with her previous works and exhibits, where by we see her effort to reveal the living being or soul not as a separate entity but as interconnected with the world it inhabits and the people with whom it shares its space.

If the show seeks to capture the contradictory dialogues of city, living; between the moving and the static, the visible and the invisible it does this so softly, so delicately, that each little pocket of colour, on its small square of off white paper makes for its own little peaceful contradiction - the self made miniature landscape is more harmony than flux.

A birds-eye view of a construction site in motion on a desert scape with a docking station where boats are just beginning to set a sail, sometimes the emblem of a snake appears, and a satellite station watches the movements of beings, who are all but little dots on an abstracted map of town. Do we spot artillery? Is this place preparing for something? Is it all about to go off?

The tracking system with its bleeping digital clock takes us down to ancient ruins and back up to the end of another day and the quieting down of its metropolis. What is so prevalent though is the sense of civilization that occurs within each frame, the vibrations of scurrying human existence - an ant farm - is mapped only through movement and time. Abstracted shapes create areas of settlement, buildings, tracks, seedbeds, gravel – walked through, dirt stains, blood blots and traces of fine hairs.

Skins of the earth.

Though we talk of the human soul as the one which is looking for balance, here the artist in question is mark-making in a way that appears undomestic; like a creature of another species scratching at the surface, proving his existence, making himself vital, searching for food and asking to survive. Repetitively each print is signed in pencil together with a small text marking them each 1/1 (one of one), matching the title of the show; the mono print is a one off, a moment which has passed and will not be replicated. The artist describes the works as painting, and this is justifiable since the print making process has been edited, overlaid, patched up and in places even eliminated and scratched out. Earthy tones are aligned and misaligned with blocks and patches of inky pigments, a bright blue, a fluorescent yellow, is dynamite in this otherwise still-scape.