Fathi Hassan focuses on the interaction between spoken and written language. Single letters, words or entire sentences are repeated to form captivating yet illegible ‘texts’ that draw from Arabic calligraphy, abstract and figurative designs and symbols, allowing for shifting meaning and multiple interpretations of the words and invented graphic signs. Hassan’s dream-like stories explore issues of migration, memory, cultural belonging and loss. Born in Cairo to a Nubian family, Hassan has lived in Italy since 1984 and recently relocated to Scotland. His work reflects an identity in constant flux.
Hemsat brings together more than one hundred paintings and drawings, exploring the space between graphic symbolism and literal meaning. Diverse in style, their sizes span from postcard to large sheets. The selection is not exhaustive, instead focused as thematic groups that highlight certain aspects, while linking them all into a wider dialogue, a tale that seems to expand beyond the frame, which passes from work to work.
Hassan’s calligraphy is inspired by Kufic scripts among others but is highly personal and not based on any one determinable script. Writing for him is something spiritual which flows likes the voice of a loved one or the movement of water. The earliest works, small drawings dating back to the 1980s and 1990s, focus on phonemes as the unit to construct the language. Hassan either covers most of the surface with Arabic or Latin letters to create a one-word resonating poem, or instead scatters letters and phrases, leaving empty spaces on the paper, to focus on a specific keyword. Figurative elements and geometric shapes such as spirals or stylized eyes or ladders sometimes substitute the writing and resemble an archaic image-based language.
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