CARAVAN Board Member Sylvia van Vliet Ragheb shares her top pick.
Julie Mehretu, Stadia II, 2004, ink and acrylic on canvas, 108 x 144 inches
I met Julie a couple of years ago in New York and became a fan of her work. Her work is about people, cities, dislocation and placelessness; she uses a mix of graffiti, architecture and ancient art techniques, all combined onto enormous sized canvases. Her work contains layered and enveloping narratives that reveal themselves as one moves closer to the canvas.
The work is held at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Sylvia van Vliet Ragheb is the co-Founder of Syra Arts, a gallerist and specialist in contemporary Arab art. Originally from the Netherlands, she is a graduate of the Schoevers Institute in Nijmegen, studied French at the Sorbonne in Paris, and has since lived in Germany, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. While in Egypt she became immersed in the Egyptian art scene.
Following the “Egyptian Revolution,” Sylvia moved to Washington DC, co-founding Syra Arts, with a gallery in the Georgetown area promoting Egyptian and Middle Eastern artists in the US. Her gallery represents some of the Middle East's leading contemporary painters, sculptors, and jewelry designers. She also represents the renowned Egyptian jeweler, Azza Fahmy, in the United States.