SOUAD MARDAM BEY

SOUAD MARDAM BEY

Mardam Bey’s oversized canvases are brimming with undercurrents of emotion; layers of color and intricate details which adorn her subjects, yet it is their eyes that leave you spellbound. Trapped behind hauntingly beautiful irises are tales derived from life.

Her palette alternates from one painting to another; through scarlet backgrounds, violet turbans, and orange cloaks - the artist professes her passion for color. Still, she grants each of her subjects a colorfully, melancholic persona. Their plush lips are sealed, fencing in their deepest secrets, while their eyes ratify an ethereal disposition.

The artist has seen her subjects a million times before, either lurking around or speeding past her on the streets - and all around her head. It is humankind, which drives this artist’s paint brush. Yet Mardam Bey does not simply produce snapshots of your everyday man and woman - she creates a community of otherworldly creatures, held captive to her use of overpowering colors and entrancing techniques.

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SOUAD MARDAM BEY

Cairo-based artist Souad Mardam Bey. Her colourful canvases portray ethereal and ephemeral figures and silhouettes, such as Nubian faces and figures with highly accented features, wearing typical clothes from Egypt’s belle époque era. All her subjects, humans and animals, are fantastical and whimsical. Her complex art, inspired by Egypt, is infused with a great symbolism. In her paintings she likes to use gold foil, earthy shades, red and bordeaux.

Born of a Kurdish German mother and a Syrian father, Mardam Bey combines a great variety of faiths, customs and traditions in her work. She has lived in many countries in the Middle East and studied philosophy and art in Beirut.

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