RANIA EL HAKIM
I Consist Only of Particles
60 cm x 80 cm
Oil on canvas
Similar to the units of forms and the units of time that join together through visible or invisible bridges, so are the many shapes found in our universe that are connected to each other. They continuously disintegrate and reunite into further new forms, thus, creating an endless mechanism of movement that fashions the world and controls its motion. In my painting, I am trying to depict this invisible energy that empowers life through an ongoing course of events and time. I am concerned with the aesthetics of the form, whether it is organic or geometrical, of a vivid or a pale color, only if it exposes this dynamic energy, creating a mystic tone in the painting. Each form yields to the other as if connected with an invisible chain.
The square, as a shape, is a single, independent unit. It invites a feeling of strength and stability. Yet, in my work where I used the square as the only shape, I tried to create a soft movement and build invisible bridges among these confirmed figures. It is an attempt to reflect the image of an ever-changing world through a variety of irregular units that break up but reintegrate once more so harmoniously in the sphere of the painting.
Rania El Hakim is an Egyptian artist living in Cairo. She studied Business Administration at the American University in Cairo and launched her own line of children’s wear, ‘Concrete Generation’. A long-time devotee to art and art history and working in the studios of the artists Mahmud Abdullah and Mustafa Al Razzaz, she dedicated her life full-time to painting. Rania has been showing her art in galleries in Egypt, Azerbaijan and Kuwait and has held solo exhibitions. Her travels throughout the Middle East, Europe and the United States gave her the chance to experience the arts and literature of many mixed cultures and became aware of how cultural diversity creates energy, rhythm and movement. Her unique abstract style gives her the freedom to capture this mélange of relationships and create dialogue between the static and the dynamic, the visible and the invisible, the vibrant and the quiescent, and show their connections as a reflection of the human soul.
After meeting the Slovenian poet and artist Gregor Preac, Rania started on a multicultural project: a poetry book for children with Preac's poems and her illustrations of mono-prints. The book’s purpose is to show the direction the world should take; interaction and communication and not separation and war.