ENCOUNTERS | Artist Sueraya Shaheen @sueraya Solo Exhibition at La Fontaine Center of Contemporary Art | Bahrain | March 12th - 30th, 2015 @laFontaine51

La Fontaine Centre of Contemporary Art is pleased to present Encounters, a solo exhibition by Syrian-American photographer Sueraya Shaheen, featuring a collection of documentary-style portraits of some of the most exciting artists working in the Middle East today.

Shaheen’s fascination with visual artists began as a child growing up in Beirut when she lived in an apartment on the city’s famous Hamra Street, a magnet for intellectuals in the 60s, where she recalls her parents hosting salons attended by artists and writers, ‘who would talk and listen to music and poetry, smoking cigarettes on the large balcony into the night’. Although she moved with her family to England in 1975, Shaheen’s nostalgia for that bohemian world remained and while earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Washington D.C., she began to photograph fellow student artists in their studios. By the time she graduated, she knew that this would be her focus, and after doing portraits for a book on Texan artists, she decided to return to her roots and photograph and archive the visionary talents contributing to the Middle East’s thriving art scene – a project that has seen her travel throughout the region over the past four years, continually building her archive. 

‘You generally see art in white-walled galleries or catalogues and changing hands in the market place,’ says Shaheen, ‘but there are real people involved and I wanted to show art’s humanness by photographing artists in their own environments, which so often reflect who they are.’ The result is a collection of intimate portraits, which capture the essence of her subjects. The Lebanese painter Ayman Baalbaki, for example, internationally recognised for his depictions of Beirut’s war-ravaged urban landscape, has been photographed on the roof of his studio with the city spread out below him. In another image, Moroccan artist Hassan Hajaj stands in the doorway of his studio on a gritty London street, with Arabic Coca Cola crates visible through its windows, creating a tableau reminiscent of his famous portraits framed with Arabic logos for household brands. Then there’s the portrait of Palestinian artist Jeffar Khaldi, whose devil-may-care stance (feet up, refusing to look at the camera) hints at the fact that he’s one of the bad boys of the art scene. The exhibition’s name is thus truly apt since one comes away from it with a sense of having had a personal encounter with each of the artists featured. 

Thanks to Shaheen’s sensitive compositions, combined with her spontaneous and candid approach, the images are works of art in themselves, while collectively offering a snapshot of the Middle East’s artistic landscape, which may prove even more valuable 10 years from now, when they will represent a type of time capsule of the region’s art scene.

The opening reception for Encounters takes place at La Fontaine, Manama, at 6.30pm on Thursday, March 12th, 2015, followed by a dinner performance by a jazz trio made up of the accomplished Parisian pianist Nicolas Leseur and vocalists Hans Stockenberger from the US and Turkish-Canadian Yeliz Christensen.

For more information, please contact La Fontaine on +973 230 123 or at info@lafontaineartcentre.net

About the artist: 
Sueraya Shaheen was born in Beirut and currently lives in Dubai. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington D.C. and has worked as a freelance photojournalist for nearly two decades. Her group- and solo-exhibitions include Govinda Gallery and the Kennedy Centre, Washington D.C.; Side by Side Gallery, Berlin, Germany; Sloan Fine Art, New York; Salsali Private Museum, Dubai, UAE, and the Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston, Texas, where Encounters debuted in March 2014. Her work has also appeared in several publications, including ‘Arab Photography Now’, edited by Rose Issa and Michket Krifa, and ‘Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring: Conversations with Artists from the Arab World’ by Till Ferath and Sam Bardaouil.