artwork by Nabila Hilmi
17 January – 7 March 2014
Nabila Hilmi was one of the most distinguished Palestinian artists
living in the United States. Gallery Al-Quds is privileged to exhibit
a retrospective of her work.
March 2, 2014
By Mark JenkinsGalleries: Nabila Hilmi
Jerusalem-born Nabila Hilmi (1940-2011) lived much of her life in the United States, a country she called “too big, too green for me.” That taste is reflected in the Palestinian-American artist’s retrospective at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery Al-Quds. The collages, watercolors, prints and drawings are usually earth-toned, with hints of blue and pink. The work, much of it untitled and undated, ranges over several decades, and from expressionism to abstraction. Inserting bits of paper and text gives Hilmi’s style depth and spontaneity; it also suggests a person who’s skilled at making do. But one of the strongest pieces, “Motion & Emotion,” is rendered in ink and pastel, without collage. It’s a procession of glyphs that also hint at human forms, as if to show how ideas sometimes become actions.
Her words about her work
“I was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Egypt, and lived in Lebanon and
Jordan before settling in the United States. These countries often
ingrained deep within me a strong sense of time, space and history.
People and places, often abstracted, fill the space of my works. They
move freely in a world with no frontiers: bring memories of people and
places from past experiences. They reflect the need to live in the
moment, to take hold of time and space.
I studied Law (License & D.E.S., 1973, Universite St. Joseph) and Fine Arts (BA 1983, BUC
currently LAU) in Beirut, Lebanon, and pursued my art studies in New
York (Art Students League 1981-86) and Philadelphia (Barnes Foundation,
1991-94).
Through the years, I have come to realize that my work
reflects the many places I had lived in and what these places mean to me
I paint my world, a world tamed by me to embrace my visual memories,
past experiences and aspirations, I paint people’s motion in time and
space, their constant emotional migration and their search for close,
secure relationships within loose boundaries and their own free space.
Plastically, the line unites and separates, shaping the interacting forms and
activating the negative space. Color is instrumental in connecting the
forms, building the moos and the feeling of life flowing, ever changing,
ever the same. My work focused mostly on relationships between
color, line and form and their interaction in both space and time. It
reflected moods and atmospheres based on the reconciliation of
opposites: mass and void, light and shadow, inner and outer worlds,
strength and vulnerability…always inspired by a reality, a reality
abstracted in such a way as to reflect motion, but also an idea of
dream, illusion…inducing the spectator to follow his or her own dream
and reality.
Collage adds another dimension, a transparent depth,
and intensifies, the way it is integrated, in harmony and /or in
contrast with line, color and shape, the feeling of motion, of life
going on.
Having moved to the U.S., a big country, too big, too
green for me, I related best to the people. We shared the same human
feelings and emotions. I came to understand that they were the tools
that connected me to my past and the present. They are also the
anchors; the roots that help me step into the future.
Thus, the figure became overwhelming through its invasion of the surrounding
space, a space filled with the light and luminous atmosphere of my
original country, its soothing, seductive colors; its intimacy as well
as its vastness and openness; its warmth and turmoil. By putting
side-by-side soft, muted tones and dynamic vivid forms, I wanted to
create a world in which opposites flow and connect—a harmonious,
rhythmic and integrated world.”
