Ahmed Abdalla
Born 1963, El Sharkey, The Delta, Egypt, lives in West Somerville, MA, and works in Boston, MA
Poetics of Memory #11, 1996, mixed media on canvas, Museum Purchase, 2001.62
Ahmed Abdalla is inspired by the human need to communicate. While living in Egypt, the Netherlands, and the United States, he recognized this basic need as the “meeting point between different cultures.” Abdalla’s work aims to show the difficulties and possibilities of communication. In the series Poetics of Memory, he uses layers of gesso, pale pigments, references to manuscripts, and calligraphy that hearkens back to his Egyptian background. The marks are suggestive of language, musical notations, mathematical computations, and pictograms, yet they are not specific. They hover at the edge of recognition, allowing the viewer to find multiple rich meanings in these mystical images that are simultaneously ancient and contemporary. Abdalla's painting Poetics of Memory #11 was purchased from The 2001 DeCordova Annual Exhibition.
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