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0 - Issue 38
Asma Fayoumi at a change of season
One of Ayyam Gallery’s seasoned artists ventures into new terrainby Sara Ismail
One of Syria’s leading contemporary female artists, Asma Fayoumi is back with a new collection exhibiting at Ayyam Gallery from March 16th until the end of April.
Known to have developed and leaped between different artistic styles, Fayoumi confesses to Forward Magazine her deep fascination and respect for change. Her work is a genuine illustration of a life-long search for alternative aesthetic languages and a rejection of conformity. Inclusive of many different styles and methods, Fayoumi reaffirms that despite her petit stature, she longs for, and works towards, a “panoramic view regardless of style” because “an artist should not be scared to change, and paint freely, for artistic style and an artist’s stamp is internal and inevitable.”
Growing up, Fayoumi’s eyes were “washed by beauty” in a house filled with paintings on the wall and poetry on the shelves. Her family’s interest in art and culture might have given Fayoumi a visual library and her father, the owner of a cinema, further developed her interest in visual arts; “We had a house with a garden and flowers, I used to play with those flowers and pebbles to make formations and small houses.” This, however, did not push her to an official debut as a young artist; she rather found her way into lines and colors with a child’s instinct. “When I first held the pen, I drew, as if it were natural and that I’m not doing something different from others, as if that’s what everyone should do.” Encouraged by her family and friends’ attention and fascination, Fayoumi continued to develop her artistic interests and skills growing up, alongside writing poetry, which she later gave up to focus all expression on painting and art.
Asma Fayoumi’s passion of portraits and figures comes from the belief that “within a person, there’s everything beautiful, worthy and empathetic because to be human is to have emotions.” Her very personal emotional memory makes for sentimental portraits, they are filters with which she seems into herself as well as her subject’s eyes, facial expressions. Being a mother affected Fayoumi’s life and artwork realizing that children are great muses. Commenting on her artistic phase painting children, Fayoumi explains “when I look at my child laughing, I become oblivious to the rest of the world, that laugh erases all the grief that surrounds life.” Also influenced by wars and injustices, Fayoumi remembers a picture she saw during the Gaza war of “someone carrying a little girl and her head was resting on her carrier’s lap.” This image later found itself from Fayoumi’s eyes to her paint “What I saw in this scene were those huge hands. I didn’t paint this scene when I saw it but months after, I found myself drawing those hands.”
“I don’t paint landscape, but I believe nature indirectly influences my work, it crawls inside me and filters out on someone’s portrait in a painting of mine.” Affected by change that surrounds her, Fayoumi explains how the change of season communicates with her “spring blossoms in me and I paint such optimistic lines, then comes winter with rain … it’s beautiful, but it’s a melancholic sense of beauty.” She noticed the brightness and warm color palette than spring brings to her canvas and the cold beauty that winter carries. Driven by how she reacts to her personal experiences and surroundings, Fayoumi is confident in her freedom to express them in any form, color and shape she’s inclined to. “I want everyone to understand me, I want to understand everyone, to communicate, but I shouldn’t have to compromise my art to build that bridge between us.”
Much like the change of season that deeply affects Fayoumi’s state of mind and artwork, so has growing older, “this noise of colors that used to express this youthful internal violence inside me has now grown calmer inside me.” For after having exhibited a collection in black and white, which she insists are not lack of color, her use of color in her new collection now exhibiting at Ayyam Gallery is, in a sense, calmer and more restrained. If Fayoumi could exhibit her artwork anywhere, she would choose to exhibit it in the museum. She appreciates the respect that is given to an artist and their artwork and that, she found with Ayyam Gallery. “Having an arts agent such as Ayyam Gallery,” Fayoumi comments, “is very important, because artists don’t know how to market themselves, and they don’t know how to sell.” Ayyam Gallery has previously published a book of her past work and she is now very comfortable knowing that Ayyam Gallery treat her artwork with the upmost respect.
