While Huda Lutfi is known for her sharpwitted social and political works, her newest exhibition, Dawn Portraits, at Gypsum Gallery offers a rare immersion into her lesser known, more quiet practice of portrait painting.
The renowned artist and historian, Lutfi, is constantly looking outward and around her, always collecting material to use for voicing her thoughts on her surroundings, capturing Cairo’s pulse and aesthetic.
Looking at her oeuvre, we see Lutfi process urban dynamics to create works that evoke Egyptian collective memory, through collages, installations and video art, often using satire, paradox and humour.
A space of one’s own
In Dawn Portraits, however, the critical commentary has gone quiet, clearing the way for a series of portraits that come from a different, quieter space within the artist, produced in the early, tranquil hours of the day.
There is no evocation of collective memory; no reference to events for viewers to knowingly nod at; no conversation with the city, but rather a conversation with herself.
Though less frequently exhibited, this is not first time Lutfi has showcased her portraits.
Also titled Dawn Portraits, in 2002 she displayed the paintings she had produced the year earlier at Cairo’s Townhouse Gallery and at the Fortis Circus Theatre Gallery in The Hague.
“It’s something I do every few years, when I want to just take time out, to reflect and be by myself. To enjoy playing with paint and form and paper,” Lutfi told Ahram Online during an interview at the Townhouse’s Library.
Fittingly, the backdrop to our conversation was the Townhouse’s exhibition of antiques and paraphernalia collected by Amgad Naguib.
The massive collection matches Lutfi’s interest in old objects and history, but also — as it feels like an entire house or shop is being moved into the gallery — brings to mind temporary displacement, which was relevant to Lutfi’s story in the past year.
“When the building that houses my studio [and part of the Townhouse’s headquarters] collapsed, we were asked to evacuate right away and I left in a hurry,” she says.
Only a week before the evacuation, she had just finished selecting and shipping many of her works to Dubai for a large solo exhibition at the Third Line Gallery, titled Magnetic Bodies: Imaging the Urban, a project that left her exhausted.
Between the demanding solo and being out of her studio, she welcomed the quieter, less analytical practice in her daily portraits, and “working small for the time being.”
