Exhibition at The Third Line, Dubai (Nov 2 – Dec 10, 2016) Sherin Guirguis: El Beit El Kabir

Sherin Guirguis, Formulations VI, 2014, Mixed media on hand cut paper, 50.8x45.7cm / Courtesy of The Third Line and the Artist

Sherin’s new body of work, built in three parts over the past two years, incorporates a combination of sculptural forms, paintings and works on paper. Shown together for the first time, they continue an interplay between personal and public histories, more specifically taking cues from her Egyptian heritage and her experience as an Egyptian-American immigrant. Framed through the lens of her diasporic identity, the exhibition recreates the last vestiges of a connection with her homeland The series is anchored in three concepts – site, text and lost history.

Sherin Guirguis, Formulations X, 2014, Mixed media on hand cut paper, 50.8x45.7cm / Courtesy of The Third Line and the Artist

Here the site is the last architectural connection with her birthplace; the text is a Rumi poem that talks about placelessness/tracelessness that embodies the immigrant/nomadic experience; and the lost history is the narrative of many immigrants that leave behind their home, heritage and familiar faces, and have to live in a permanent liminal space of otherness.

In 2007, the local government in Luxor, Egypt demolished the Guirguis family house to widen the road, in an effort to mitigate the growth in the city’s population and to accommodate the growing tourist industry there. For Sherin, who left Egypt more than two decades ago, this severed the last remaining ties to her home and, hence, her homeland. What exists now is a synthesis of memories and photographs – the ethereal and the tangible – and she uses these as the basis of her new work.

Sherin Guirguis, Untitled (Beitana Ill), 2016, Mixed media on hand-cut paper, 132 x 132 cm / Courtesy of The Third Line and the Artist

Sherin Guirguis, El Beit El Kabir, 2016, Installation View / Courtesy of The Third Line

Included in the exhibition are several works on paper where she moves between fervid gestural painting and a highly controlled manipulation of the surface. The formal contrast between the painted marks and structured geometry, the act of removal (cutting) and addition (thick, opaque paints), and the way the “darts” cut through the compositions with sharpness and speed alludes to moments of transition and transformation. Moments where dissonance and harmony exist simultaneously.

While the shape of each piece is inspired from sacred geometry that is prevalent in many ancient cultures of the East, Sherin lends a layered nuance through intricately cutting into the paper, and producing delicate latticework reminiscent of the mashrabiya. This reference to a very specific architectural detailing nods towards the lines of division drawn between the public and private spaces; the works titled Beitana, literally meaning our home in Arabic, seem to be providing a glimpse in to this lost space.

Sherin Guirguis, Untitled (Hexagon), 2015, Mixed Media on hand-cut paper, 101.6x117x5cm / Courtesy of The Third Line

Sherin Guirguis, El Beit El Kabir, 2016, Installation View / Courtesy of The Third Line

Accompanying the works on paper are a small sculptural bodies that recreate the Ollal, a traditional water vessel that is found in older households in the south of Egypt. Winged, geometric patterns, seen in her earlier large-scale sculptures, are fashioned by laser cutting aluminium panels that are then mounted on wooden bases. These vessels, unlike their very nature, do not have an opening, belying their very purpose for containing a liquid. Hence they lose all utilitarian functions and adopt only ornamental ones. The forms take on a more architectural character, monumentalizing these fragments from Sherin’s heritage. Yet they appear as ghosts of the objects they reference – the white makes the base disappear; the florescence above creates a hovering effect – suspended between presence and absence.

Through El Beit El Kabir, Sherin continues to explore what it means to identify with an idea of belonging and identity – both which bring them an imagined sense of affiliation, attachment and displacement.

Sherin Guirguis, Untitled (Octagram), 2015, Mixed Media on hand-cut paper, 117x117x5cm / Courtesy of The Third Line

Sherin Guirguis, El Beit El Kabir, 2016, Installation View / Courtesy of The Third Line

Sherin Guirguis

Sherin Guirguis (b. Egypt, 1974) received her BA from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1997 and her MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2001.

Sherin’s solo projects include Qasr El Shouq at LAXART, Los Angeles, CA, USA. Selected Group exhibitions include We Must Risk Delight, La Biennale di Venezia, Italy; The Avant-Garde Collection, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA, USA; Color Dialogue, Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah, UAE; Southwestnet: Sherin Guirguis and Carrie Marill, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona, USA; Quadruple Consciousness at Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA, USA; Under The Knife at the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA, USA; Las Vegas Diaspora at the Las Vegas Art Museum and the Laguna Beach Art Museum, USA; Quickening at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tuscan, AZ, USA and The Dreams Stuff is Made Of, Art Frankfurt, Germany. Sherin has participated in a series of public programs in conjunction with the 11th Cairo Biennale in 2008. In 2012, she was awarded several prestigious grants and fellowships including the California Community Foundation Visual Artist Fellowship, the Artists’ Resources for Completion Grant and the Investing in Artists Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation.

Sherin Guirguis, El Beit El Kabir, 2016, Installation View / Courtesy of The Third Line

Sherin’s work has been acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; the Houston Museum of Fine Art, Houston, TX and the Las Vegas Museum of Contemporary Art, NV. Sherin lives and works in Los Angeles, USA.