Much akin to Farid’s compositional technique, borders are enigmatic and possess a beguiling metaphorical duality in their own right. They can be intransigent limitations that demarcate, appropriate and separate while they can just as readily be fluid, volatile and fluctuating in their constitution, as the most significant and lasting borders often exist in our own minds, whether self-imposed or not.
Safarkhan resident talent and Egypt’s foremost abstract artist Ahmed Farid, needs no introduction, and we are again thrilled to be unveiling his latest collection from Tuesday 4 February to Tuesday 4 March, 2025. Farid’s creative process is in a constant state of tumultuous upheaval, a wellspring of existential expression that is intuitively sensitive to the myriad environmental changes we are subjected to, be they; social, political, geographical, economical or spiritual. It is from this potent source that we witness the coalescing of his most recent creative output around the overarching conception of borders and what they constitute to us in each of their distinct configurations. Much akin to Farid’s compositional technique, borders are enigmatic and possess a beguiling metaphorical duality in their own right. They can be intransigent limitations that demarcate, appropriate and separate while they can just as readily be fluid, volatile and fluctuating in their constitution, as the most significant and lasting borders often exist in our own minds, whether self-imposed or not.
Mirroring this inherent duality, and following Farid’s penchant for exploring dichotomy in his painting, we see a collection that – like borders in all their many iterations – contrasts and enjoins the harsh, uncompromising and immutable with the tranquil, flexible and aspirational. Farid’s meditation of what borders mean to us is an illustrative quest to communicate their omnipotence, often being present when we are least or completely unaware. Borders engender positive sentiments of security, comfort, like-mindedness and dominion, but equally they give rise to their diametric opposites in conflict, pain, division and displacement. Wherever the physical or figurative manifestation of borders occur, they are immensely powerful in both their connotation and application. Borders can cause us to seek anew in hope, they also cause us to look inwardly in protection, and in Farid’s latest works we see his telltale assemblages of white lines separating, sectioning and uncoupling, but also combining, complementing and consolidating their surroundings.
We see in this collection a notable shift in palette, with a spectrum of the artist’s favored blues that range from lighter shades that are uplifting, serene and ascendent to the much darker that portend notions of calamity, detachment and deconstruction. Farid does not discard the vibrancy of his palette however, with his characteristic iridescent hues of gold, orange, yellow and purple invigorating his canvases, yet now we see them take on a more stark and uncompromising disposition. In these works we see the concept of borders take shape, as borders do, in different ways and between; background and foreground, color and line, shape and texture, but perhaps most impressively in the intangible and abstract aesthetic that each piece conveys. It is an aura that communicates the plethora of attributes and emotive qualities that borders convey. Most of all it is the message that borders simultaneously represent the polarity of belonging and longing, the reality of being respectively with or without; a person, place, tribe, faith or God Himself.
