For some artists and galleries, calling an exhibition accessible, pretty or easy on the eye is considered the ultimate insult: surely art should be opaque, cryptic, challenging and rather baffling? If you actually want to hang it on the wall, it must be (don't say it) commercial.
Luckily, that is not an approach that the B_asement Gallery takes with its choice of artists, and it's not something that the Iranian artist Ahoo Hamedi is particularly worried about. The 27-year-old painter creates ethereal figurative works that are, it has to be said, quite beautiful. Soft, inky washes float across the thick, textured watercolour paper, expressively marking out eyes, faces, hair and lips in black, red and delicate oyster pinks. The compositions, whether the sad face of one girl or a dynamic Three Graces-style trio of women, mid-gesture, are harmoniously constructed, filling the frame but with large internal spaces in which what is missing is just as important as what is there. All in all, these pictures are rather pretty.
Crucially, though, they are also evocative, engaging - if not intellectually then emotionally - and heartfelt, far enough from merely commercially pleasing pieces to afford the artist some serious scrutiny and a keen following that has developed over just a few years. Even the fragile beauty of some of those faces, punctuated with strongly painted, expressive eyes and heavily rendered hair, goes beyond a surface attractiveness. The intriguing expressions, the respective strength or gentleness of the lines, the vividness or translucency of the colours all seem to point to some specific meaning, just out of reach of the viewer. Why are these three women locked in a moment of such yearning - and who are they?
They are no one in particular, says the artist: simply expressions of her own feelings as she paints, involving no more intellectual rigour than that. She professes no forethought when she sits down to create a work, simply seeing what develops from the first or second brushstrokes. Certainly, the spontaneity implicit in this approach is evident in each picture, with a commendable freedom of stroke and gestural vivacity.
If the pictures represent anyone, it is Hamedi herself, though each is untitled, perhaps allowing the viewer to project other features on those blank faces. The eyes proliferated on some of the works - particularly on a large piece made from a patchwork of watercolours, which represents her newest work - do indeed bear a resemblance to Hamedi's own features, and there is no doubt that the work has some element of autobiography, if only in its expression of her subconscious.
For the Iranian artist, the eyes have a special resonance: "When you look at someone's eyes, you see the whole person behind them," she says. The concept of eyes as windows to the soul is not a new one, but it is in the pictures that show women wearing the facial veil that it takes on a new poignancy. The first of these pictures came, she says, from her tried-and-tested method of the accidental mark: she painted a line, it washed out and it looked like a hijab. The eyes staring out from above it are strongly rendered and all the more compelling for their isolation from other facial features. In two more paintings along the same lines, she continued the hijab theme, but this time closing the eyes of the subjects, creating a sense of serenity without those anguished orbs.
Hamedi's sureness of touch is an asset when working in such a loose manner, and though the anatomy of the subjects' movement is not always entirely successful, there remains nevertheless a sense of the classic heritage of draughtsmanship, with one work feeling rather like a large rendering of a Rembrandt sketch, another calling to mind the bold stares of the women that Manet liked to paint. This painterly technique is all the more effective in those works in which she pares back the visual language to the bare minimum, using a few strokes to evoke a whole subject. Those works in which the brushstrokes are angrily scribbled and scrawled and the reds and blacks are messily combined may take more effort and be more emotive and even cathartic, but they somehow feel less worthwhile, as unrestrained, unedited tantrums on paper. These works are few, though, and the ephemeral lines and vaporous washes of her more successful works clearly point her in a direction that can only lead to more refinement of thought and technique as she develops and matures as an artist. It's early days for the young artist, but her progress looks likely to be worth following.
Ahoo Hamedi is at the B_asement Gallery, Dubai, until June 13 (04 341 4409).
Company Profile
Name: Thndr
Started: 2019
Co-founders: Ahmad Hammouda and Seif Amr
Sector: FinTech
Headquarters: Egypt
UAE base: Hub71, Abu Dhabi
Current number of staff: More than 150
Funds raised: $22 million
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Cricket World Cup League Two
Oman, UAE, Namibia
Al Amerat, Muscat
Results
Oman beat UAE by five wickets
UAE beat Namibia by eight runs
Fixtures
Wednesday January 8 –Oman v Namibia
Thursday January 9 – Oman v UAE
Saturday January 11 – UAE v Namibia
Sunday January 12 – Oman v Namibia
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BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE
Starring: Winona Ryder, Michael Keaton, Jenny Ortega
Director: Tim Burton
Rating: 3/5
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The specs
Engine: 2.7-litre 4-cylinder Turbomax
Power: 310hp
Torque: 583Nm
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Price: From Dh192,500
On sale: Now
The results of the first round are as follows:
Qais Saied (Independent): 18.4 per cent
Nabil Karoui (Qalb Tounes): 15.58 per cent
Abdelfattah Mourou (Ennahdha party): 12.88 per cent
Abdelkarim Zbidi (two-time defence minister backed by Nidaa Tounes party): 10.7 per cent
Youssef Chahed (former prime minister, leader of Long Live Tunisia): 7.3 per cent
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Greatest of All Time
Starring: Vijay, Sneha, Prashanth, Prabhu Deva, Mohan
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RESULTS
Women:
55kg brown-black belt: Amal Amjahid (BEL) bt Amanda Monteiro (BRA) via choke
62kg brown-black belt: Bianca Basilio (BRA) bt Ffion Davies (GBR) via referee’s decision (0-0, 2-2 adv)
70kg brown-black belt: Ana Carolina Vieira (BRA) bt Jessica Swanson (USA), 9-0
90kg brown-black belt: Angelica Galvao (USA) bt Marta Szarecka (POL) 8-2
Men:
62kg black belt: Joao Miyao (BRA) bt Wan Ki-chae (KOR), 7-2
69kg black belt: Paulo Miyao (BRA) bt Gianni Grippo (USA), 2-2 (1-0 adv)
77kg black belt: Espen Mathiesen (NOR) bt Jake Mackenzie (CAN)
85kg black belt: Isaque Braz (BRA) bt Faisal Al Ketbi (UAE), 2-0
94kg black belt: Felipe Pena (BRA) bt Adam Wardzinski (POL), 4-0
110kg black belt final: Erberth Santos (BRA) bt Lucio Rodrigues (GBR) via rear naked choke
The%20specs
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Six things you need to know about UAE Women’s Special Olympics football team
Several girls started playing football at age four
They describe sport as their passion
The girls don’t dwell on their condition
They just say they may need to work a little harder than others
When not in training, they play football with their brothers and sisters
The girls want to inspire others to join the UAE Special Olympics teams
Ashes 2019 schedule
August 1-5: First Test, Edgbaston
August 14-18: Second Test, Lord's
August 22-26: Third Test, Headingley
September 4-8: Fourth Test, Old Trafford
September 12-16: Fifth Test, Oval