Cairo...Portraits of a City

Cairo is my city. I have been infatuated with it since my very outset. I have grappled with it, in many exhibitions and in diverse ways. Its changing face always arouses me. Whenever I plunge into its depths I surface with questions and exclamation marks and I am driven to search for answers. The map of the city and its dimensions are determined by people's movement; For I cannot imagine life or art without the imprint of the people, their activity, their gestures, their inspiration, their multitude, their unity. These are the visual and sensual elements that give the city its special rhythm.
In these attempts I have tried, and through this exhibition, to illustrate the city as I see it as the hours go by, resplendent in varying light and color, by night and by day... Cairo's night is very special because the Nile plays a vital role in enriching the festival of dwindling and blaring light and hue. I have a strong sense of the people's presence...I feel that I recognize their faces and read their movement on the scene of life...as if they were placed there just for my sake. They move so that I may depict their movement. They grant me the right to reduce their figure to lines, spots and colors. They allow me to transform them into an impressive and mighty being or to mere phantoms that lurk in front of the dominant background of the city.
In this exhibition, I am "obsessed" with the notion of painting...with the spontaneous progress of the brush...I try to demonstrate that lines express people's movement, that they capture the effect of radiant and optimistic faces notwithstanding the sea of suffering and pressure. I try to translate the hope that nurtures my heart...It is my dream to accomplish panoramic works that are embedded in the reality of artistic life where people blend with buildings, animals and noise... producing a picture that illustrates all contradictions and draws the beholder closer to Symbols and Magic...

Mohamed Abla