LAYLAT KHAMIS (THURSDAY NIGHT)
oil on canvas

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The painting takes its title from the song “A Thursday Night” "ليلة خميس"   by Saudi artist Mohammed Abdu.  The emotionally packed poem is a true testimony of his love. Abdo uses romantic and delicate words that sound smooth and soothing to describe the joy of meeting his loved one at 8 o’clock that night. Abdo’s highly charged words gush about his feelings using delicate imagery:

كان الندى موعود مع رمش الزهر.. والليل من فرحه عريس
The night is happy as a groom; The dew is promised to the petal 

The receiver on the other end of the poem, what looks like the figure of a seated woman fades into blue; we cannot see her expression or understand what it means. How can we describe it? An unreadable face, an inexplicable emotion ... Sadness? Regret? Coldness? Unease? Alienation? All we are allowed to see are her hand gesture and her bourgeois imperious pose, evocative of the famous Florentine lady of the smirk.

Cool calm and collected, at polar opposites with the singer’s gushing sentimentality. It is this aesthetic of contradictory convergence that my painting is trying to describe.

 The Surrealists view love as ‘mad love’, mad, because it is passionate beyond all limits of reason, and resonates with their undoing every idea of the rational in favor of a present subconscious state of expectation and chance.
Abdu’s anticipated encounter with his beloved is sufficient to nourish an entire lifetime of obsessive imagination. It is this mingling of contraries: Abdu’s poem on one hand vs the receiver on the other, this notion of opposition is what I am trying to describe.

 

Abir Tabbarah 

Born in Como, Italy 

Lives and Works in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Shortlisted for the 4th edition of the International Emerging Artist Award (IEAA) 2016.

Graduated from the Lebanese American University in Beirut (L.A.U.) with a Bachelor of Science degree in Interior Design. 

Recently her work was collected by: 

• His Excellency Zaki Nusseibeh, Abu Dhabi. Painting; “Golden Fingers on Ultramarine”

• Kenny Schachter, Curator and Art Dealer, New York, USA.  Painting: “The Impermanence of Permanence”

 

 

عبير طبارة

ولدت في كومو، إيطاليا.

تعيش وتعمل في مدينة أبو ظبي، الإمارات العربية المتحدة.

تم ترشيحها للتصفيات النهائيه لجائزة الفنانين الصاعدين (IEAA) الدورة الرابعة عام 2016.

تخرجت من الجامعة اللبنانية الأمريكية في بيروت بدرجة البكالوريوس في التصميم الهندسي الداخلي.

مؤخرا تم اقتناء أعمالها من قبل:​​

• معالي السيد زكي نسيبة، أبو ظبي، الإمارات العربية المتحدة. اللوحة” ;اصابع ذهبية على “.

• كيني شاختر، مقيم وخبير الفن المعاصر، نيويورك، الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية. اللوحة: 
  ”;دوام الحال من المحال “.