INVESTEC CAPE TOWN ART FAIR - Booth A8
Dual-presentation by Huda Lutfi & Tamara Al Samerraei
21 - 23 February 2025
Press release EN
For Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Gypsum is pleased to present a curated selection of paintings by Kuwaiti artist Tamara Al Samerraei alongside fabric and sculptural works by Egyptian artist Huda Lutfi. Both artists draw on personal histories and everyday life to offer meditations on memory, domesticity, and the passage between private and public.
Lutfi’s new body of work marks a departure from her earlier, more politically charged practice, embracing a quieter, introspective discourse. She began this body of fabric work by embroidering on used organza teabags—a meditative domestic exercise that gradually evolved into an extensive and urgent practice. Addressing themes of healing and familial memory, she creates stitched works on mannequin busts and organza fabric, reflecting on the relationship between feminine traditions of care and labor.
Al Samerraei’s paintings are often triggered by photographs from her archive and notebook sketches to reconstruct spaces of leisure into unsettling environments. Her compositions convey a sense of interrupted temporality—moments caught just before or after an unseen event. Figures are mostly absent, leaving vast landscapes imbued with silent anticipation. Painting on raw, loose linen, she allows the edges of her works to remain organic and frayed, suspending time and disclosing the fragility of her imagery.
OBJECT OF ATTENTION
A solo show by Nada Elkalaawy
12 February - 18 March 2025
Press release EN/AR
Gypsum is pleased to present Object of Attention, the first solo exhibition in Cairo by London-based Egyptian artist Nada Elkalaawy, featuring a series of oil paintings. In this body of work, Elkalaawy invites viewers to reconsider the role of everyday and collectable domestic objects, reimagining them as vessels of memories, narratives, and emotions.
Elkalaawy’s practice delves into what makes an image slip from truth into fiction. Her compositions interlace family photographs, depictions of art historical objects, and images sourced from the internet. In her latest works, she focuses on houseware items to explore themes of attachment and belonging. Rather than directly depicting these objects, Elkalaawy first develops sketches and drawings based on her collections of images. By weaving together multiple temporalities and localities, she produces arresting renditions of memories.
In Object of Attention, metal tureens, figurines, and dinnerware sets appear larger than life. Polished surfaces of silver, glass, and porcelain are often juxtaposed against rich tapestry-like backgrounds; their textures mimicked by thin horizontal brushstrokes that evoke the gesture of weaving. Employing photographic techniques such as cropping, focusing, and blurring, Elkalaawy stages the decorative as monumental, the lifeless as animate, and the mundane as peculiar. Through processes of mirroring and doubling, she directs focus to details otherwise overlooked. Shadows and reflective surfaces, painted through a meticulous process of layering, disrupt the flatness of the picture plane. They create an illusion of a light source that seems to extend beyond the canvas, suggesting that the paintings themselves have a life of their own.
A recurring motif in Elkalaawy’s work is the sculptural putti—winged infants often seen in religious iconography. Traditionally portrayed as passive figures on the periphery in Renaissance, Rococo, and Baroque paintings, Elkalaawy repositions them as central protagonists through scale, brilliance, and repetition. To produce such porcelain figurines or vessels, they are required to be hollow for kiln firing. Her fascination with hollowness extends to lidded serving bowls and tureens; elegant items typically displayed rather than used. By investigating this generative potential inherent in emptiness, Elkalaawy conjures new meanings about how these spaces can be occupied by souls, allegories, and kindred spirits while employing oil painting as a means of world-building.
Nada Elkalaawy is an Egyptian artist living and working in London. She holds an MFA in Painting from the Slade School of Fine Art, 2018, and BA in Fine Art from Kingston University, 2016. Her solo shows include Taymour Grahne Projects (London), Galerie DuflonRacz (Bern) and Gypsum (Cairo). Selected group shows and festivals include Marlborough Gallery (London); Half Gallery (New York); Woaw Gallery (Hong Kong); The Africa Centre (London); Kino Der Kunst (Munich); Sharjah Art Gallery (Cairo); Southwark Park Galleries (London); Nahim Isaias Museum (Guayaquil) amongst others. Elkalaawy has been awarded several residencies including Pro Helvetia Studio Residency; Montresso Art Foundation and L’appartement 22. Her work has been shortlisted for the Sainsbury Scholarship at the British School at Rome, ACS Studio Prize, Contemporary British Painting Prize, Dentons Art Prize, and the Sarabande Emerging Art fund. Elkalaawy is featured in The Anomie Review of Contemporary British Painting 2024 and is a co-founder of the artist group K-oh-llective.