Gallery Isabelle presents Through-Line, connecting key works by Emirati artist pioneer Hassan Sharif and Franco-Egyptian artist Hoda Tawakol, artists from different generations who employ ‘weaving’ as a fundamental element in which to engage with systems and their transformation or subversion.
Rifts within the structure of Sharif’s gridded Semi-System drawings reflect on errors and the marks of manual labor. Two examples from his Objects series, started in 1982 until his untimely death in 2016, are the products of simple repetitive actions and gestures (folding, knotting, sewing, cutting, gluing, dyeing) transforming natural or synthetic materials (paper, cardboard, rope, fabric, cotton, wood, wire, copper, plastic) that were either found or bought in neighborhood stores.
In a new work from her voluptuous Jungle series, Tawakol disentangles an inherited colonial past, enabling her textiles to expand and bulge beyond the frame and the two-dimensional. In her Nude series, the artist crams nylons with rice, squeezing, twisting, and sculpting the swelling bulges, before enmeshing them in netting, interrogating compelling issues of gender politics and the policing of bodies.
