Biography

Fathi Hassan explores the colonial erasure of ancient languages and oral histories as well as the ambivalence and fallibility of semiotic meaning. His family was displaced from their ancestral homeland in the Nubia region of Egypt after it was flooded by the construction of the Aswan High Dam in 1962. Shaped by the sense of loss arising from this rupture, Hassan’s practice uses graphic illegibility as a vehicle to gesture at both the challenges of communicating the traumas of forced migration and the ancient means of expression stamped out by colonialism. Across an array of media, the artist’s visual language melds symbolic elements from a rich variety of textual sources, incorporating phonemes and numerals from Arabic, Indian, Latin and Kufic-inspired graphic systems.

Hassan’s works have been presented in a number of solo and group exhibitions, including Soul Taming, Sulger-Buel Gallery, London (2021); Dream Waves, Zamalek Art Gallery, Cairo (2020); whispers, Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai (2019); Cortesie Per Gli Ospiti, Palazzo Collicola, Spoleto, Italy (2017); African Art Against the State, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, USA (2016); Edge of Memory, Clark Museum, Atlanta (2016); Migration of Signs, Williams College Museum of Art (2015); Egyptology, British Museum, London (2013); Signs of Our Times, Rose Issa Projects, Leighton House Museum, London (2011); Dakar Biennale (2008); Inscribing Meaning, Fowler Museum, Los Angeles (2007); Espijismos, San Pedro Museo de Arte, Puebla, Mexico (2007); TEXTures: Word & Symbol in Contemporary African Art, National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC (2005); 9th Cairo International Biennial (2003); and Venice Biennale (1988).
His work is part of the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; British Museum, London; National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC; Sharjah Art Foundation; and Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah Foundation, Farjam foundation, Dubai. Williams Museum, Clark Museum, Stanford Museum, Texas Museum and others.
He has been awarded the frest salon young artist, Egypt 1989, and the Marina di Ravenna Award, MAR, Ravenna, Italy (2008).
Hassan received a grant from the Italian Cultural Institute, Cairo (1979), and moved to Naples, where he enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti and wrote a thesis on the influence of African art in cubism.
Born in Cairo in 1957, he currently lives in Edinburgh and works between Italy and the United Kingdom.

SAF participation:
Sharjah Biennial 15 (2023)

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