LONDON / This is Susan Hefuna’s second solo exhibition in London and features a selection of her most recent work, including gold-plated brass drawings, silvered-bronze wall sculptures and her signature latticework wooden screens (or mashrabiyas).

image Susan Hefuna / Life And Nothing Else, wood and ink, 235x215 cm, 2013 / Courtesy of the Artist and Rose Issa Projects

In Arabic rasm means ‘drawing’, ‘outline’ or ‘pattern’ but can also mean ‘formality’, ‘legend’, ‘record’, ‘ceremony’, ‘policy’ or simply ‘design’. Hefuna plays with the several connotations of the term, taking words and phrases from everyday life and incorporating them into her works in metal or wood. Each material and technique she employs brings its own tensions, giving form to ordinary letters within an architectural space. The words and phrases suggest poetic images and ideas that can be interpreted in several ways, opening the viewer to their own imagination and fantasies.

image Susan Hefuna / Besoin-dOrient, wood and ink, 235x215 cm, 2013 / Courtesy of the Artist and Rose Issa Projects

Hefuna has worked with words for some time, twisting, embellishing or gilding them in silver or gold. Though sometimes her words and phrases are mysterious, often she uses simple, short, terms that are open to interpretation – she gives them a literal and philosophical weight by casting them in metal.

image Susan Hefuna / Ana, wall sculpture, silver bronze, 29x22 cm, 2013 / Courtesy of the Artist and Rose Issa Projects

image Susan Hefuna / Be One, wall sculpture, silver bronze, 22x29 cm, 2013 / Courtesy of the Artist and Rose Issa Projects

Susan Hefuna has exhibited widely at international institutions including the Serpentine Gallery, London; MoMa, the MAD Museum, and New Museum in New York; the Townhouse Gallery, Cairo; PiArtworks, Istanbul; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; Kunstmuseum, Thun, Switzerland; Galerie Grita Insam, Vienna; the 53rd Venice Biennale; Seville Biennial; 2nd Riwaq Biennale, Palestine; the 9th Sharjah Biennial, UAE; the Institut du Monde Arabe and the Louvre, in Paris; and the National Gallery, Cape Town.

image Susan Hefuna / See, Gold plated brass, 20x30 cm, 2013 / Courtesy of the Artist and Rose Issa Projects

image Susan Hefuna / Blind, gold plated brass, 20x30 cm, 2013 / Courtesy of the Artist and Rose Issa Projects

Her work is collected by public institutions including The British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum in London; MoMa, New York; LACMA, Los Angeles; Chicago Art Institute; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri; CU Galleries, University of Colorado, Boulder; the Pompidou, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Institut du Monde Arabe, Dior collection and the Louvre, in Paris; Barjeel Art Foundation and Sharjah Art Museum, UAE; the DIFC and Farjam Collection, Dubai; Groupe Lhoist Collection, Limelette, Belgium; Burger Collection in Zurich and Hong Kong; Neue Galerie am Joanneum, Graz, Austria; and the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart. She won the 2013 Daniel and Florence Guerlain Contemporary Drawing Prize in Paris.


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