TAMARA AL SAMERRAEI’s work is often triggered by photographs from her personal archive and from the public domain – film stills, google images and borrowed snapshots.

Opaque pools and dark bodies of water feature in both domestic settings, and natural landscapes as objects of anticipation, with figures mostly absent. A feral geography permeates lyrical, melancholic and suspenseful scenes. Her deep palette modulates between crepuscular and nocturnal. In the recesses of vicious rock formations, unruly shrubs, murky night skies, a latent threat is contained. Are we, the viewers, protagonists in this unpredictable landscape, navigating our way though its crevices? 

Her paintings communicate a sense of interrupted temporality; of having arrived just after, or before, an unseen happening. Glimpses, traces and shadows suggest the uneasy presence of an invisible observer lurking within as well as outside the frame. A slippery and evasive temperament invokes a sense of furtiveness in the onlooker. Compositions tend to stand like film stills, suggesting movement but remaining silent and tapping into cinematic tropes of psychological thrillers.

From 2017 to 2018, Al Samerraei completed an extensive series of paintings that feature recreational swimming pools, often with a solitary figure bathing in or emerging from opaque waters. In her later work, she does away with figuration altogether. 

Another recurring motif in Al-Samerraei work is her pursuance of dark or enigmatic objects begging to be found: dense and closed forms precariously finding their place within an environment when no one was looking. Knavishly motionless, they seem to be about to undergo a mysterious transformation. 

Al Samerraei prefers to paint on raw, loose linen. The edges of the works are organic, frayed, uneven. Once finished, the fabric is mounted on a larger piece of canvas and stretched - revealing vacant margins that objectify her compositions. She flirts with opposing poles of light, color and mood. Obstinate drips of liquid paint sit on the picture plane, suspending time and disclosing the vulnerability of her process. Conversely, dry physical brushstrokes denote assertive gestures and movement, behaving more like a drawing than a painting.

Al Samerraei’s work speaks of primal fears and unspoken tragedies, of unsettling loss and unbound desire. She presents the quiet voice of a subject struggling to reconstruct an elusive past or speculate on an uncertain future.

TAMARA AL SAMERRAEI (b. 1977, Kuwait) is a painter who lives and works in Beirut. She received a BA in Fine Arts from the Lebanese American University in Beirut in 2002 and completed the inaugural year of the Home Workspace Program at Ashkal Alwan (2011-2012), Beirut.

Her solo exhibitions include What Floats in Space, Marfa’ Projects, Beirut (2019); Let Me Stay a Little Longer, Marfa’ Projects, Beirut (2015-2016); Make Room for Me, Gypsum Gallery, Cairo (2014); Fleeting Fences (2011) and Something White (2008), Agial Art Gallery, Beirut.

She has participated in several group and duo exhibitions including The Cheating Hand of Randomness, Gypsum, Cairo (2021); The Clocks are Striking Thirteen, 21,39, Jeddah (2018); Home Beirut: Sounding the Neighbours, MAXXI museum, Rome (2017); Tamawuj-Sharjah Biennial13, Sharjah (2017); Play The Possum, Gypsum Gallery, Cairo (2016); Complicity, Sultan Gallery, Kuwait (2016); On Water, Rosemary and Mercury in Homeworks 7, Beirut (2015); 25 Ans De Creativite Arabe, Institut Du Monde Arabe, Paris (2012); All About Beirut, White Box, Munich (2010); Exposure, Beirut Art Center, Beirut; Radius of Art project, Fladernbunker, Kiel (2008) and ShoeBox, Dar Al Funoon, Kuwait (2007). Her work was featured in London’s Frieze Art Fair in 2017 and 2019.

Al Samerraei lives and works in Beirut.