2023 Exhibitions
MY GRANDFATHER’S ORCHARD
Ahmed ElKhalidi
Returning to exhibit in Amman in 2023, Ahmed Elkhalidi returns metaphorically to his father’s childhood home town of Jaffa, the Mediterranean and stories of his grandfather’s orchard.
ElKhalidi has always explored identity and his heritage in his artwork. This exhibition is an homage to his family, superimposing tales from a childhood in Jaffa over contemporary impressions of his own.
He works with an illustrative style enabling him to add elements from past and present with cutouts, type, photos and hand drawn elements creating a fusion of imagery, much the same way our brains throw memories around.
8 - 31 July 2023
CIRCLE MANIFESTATION
YASER DWEIK
A spotlight on contemporary work by Jordanian pioneer artist and printmaker Yaser Dweik, with original prints and works on paper covering a spiritual meaning of the circle in a traditional imagery through to contemporary calligraphy compositions.
Yaser Dweik, along with his contemporaries and great friends Mahmoud Taha, Nasr Abdel Aziz, Aziz Ammoura, Keram Al Nimri and Abdel Raouf Shamoun developed their various areas of expertise in the 1970s, crossing over disciplines and often collaborating together on works.
They were amongst the first Jordanian artists to have studied abroad and all returned to be involved in education of the arts and advance their own practices. Yaser has been a dedicated teacher and mentor to students since this time.
The circle in Dweik’s prints is associated with a wide range of symbolic meanings and aesthetic aspects. It is widely interpreted as a symbol of wholeness and unity, with its spherical form representing completeness, completion, and unity.
Despite majoring in painting, his printmaking skills evolved to introduce various technical methods and styles to his contemporary work often using several techniques in the one print. The results show deft layers of colour, texture and patterns to tell the story.
12 June - 5 July 2023
SURFACE TENSIONS
Peter Bogaczewicz
part of the 11th Image Festival Amman
As part of the 11th Image Festival Amman, Jacaranda Images is hosting an exhibition by Canadian photographer Peter Bogaczewicz.
Surface Tensions investigates the contemporary landscape of the Arabian Gulf, where the effects of human activity on the natural environment leave a particularly noticeable mark. The region’s visual purity highlights even the lightest intervention in the landscape as if it were a foreign body. Yet the interventions on this land are far from being light, the process of building ambitious infrastructure and projects, the act of putting down roots, is transforming the landscape at lightning speed.
This confluence of nature and culture is an ever-evolving dynamic that is turning progressively more complex while often becoming increasingly fraught with tension. And although humans are not alone in shaping their environment, we are uniquely placed in the animal kingdom in that what we shape ends up posing a mounting alternative to nature, transforming it into the man-made, or at the very least, man-altered, environment. It reveals a deep tension between what can be seen as progress - the aspirations of the human community and the environment.
Here the human element has a particularly noticeable presence, there is no effort at concealment that the land is there to be dominated, and progress is in itself a force of nature, rivaling nature itself.
Peter has recently published his first monograph, Kingdom of Sand and Cement (Daylight Books, 2019) with essays by photographer Edward Burtynsky, journalist and author Karen Elliott House and art historian Rodrigo Orrantia. Signed copies are available during the exhibition.
5 – 31 May 2023
