Return Journeys
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Scope
EXHIBITIONS:
Exhibition Management & Curation; Scenography & Art InstallationPUBLICATIONS:
Monographs & Editorial Design; Printing Management -
Collaborators
Afaf Zurak, Artist
Sylvia Agémian, Curator
53 Dots, Print House -
Location
Saleh Barakat Gallery
“Return Journeys affords an immersive experience of slow attunement to the artist’s distinct visual language. The book is rendered more exquisite still by the poetic texts Zurayk wrote in tandem with each series of works, which are here printed on paper vellum so that the words form a palimpsest with the tangled lines and somber colors behind them, as they lyrically address the artist’s intimate, searching process.”
Kareem Estefan
Our work with abstract artist Afaf Zurayk would culminate in her retrospective exhibition, Return Journeys, that featured a selection of her work, as well as an eponymous monograph documenting the occasion.
The monograph groups Afaf’s drawings, paintings, and sculptures from 1978 to the present into three chapters (1978–2000, 2000–10, 2010–19), each of which is paired with a short prose by the artist, set against transluscent paper, that allows the artwork to peak through.
The design of the book is left minimal, and sober in order to help facilitate a direct engagement between the artwork and the reader. Furthermore, Return Journeys directly engages the intricate relationship of text and image, an overarching theme that has carried through Afaf’s work over the past four decades, by juxtaposing the solidity of words that are printed on translucent paper, and the fluidity of images that are set within crisp white pages.
Sifting through hundreds of artworks, curator Sylvia Agemian explains that she “sought to put together the exhibition in such a way as to focus, from the outset, on the dark vein that runs through [Afaf’s] work, as well as to reveal, along the way, the serene shores that are also part of it. “ Sylvia goes on to explain that the final selection of over 150 artworks, brought viewers face to face with an autobiographical art that translated into forms Afaf’s aspirations, her impulses, her suffering and her fears, and, on the threshold of danger, her anxiety about the fate of man.
Working closely with Afaf, Sylvia, Saleh & the Saleh Barakat Gallery Team, as well as a slew of writers, photographers, filmmakers, framers, and editors, Twig sought to preserve Afaf’s artistic values, and aesthetic, all while facilitating and coordinating the multiplicity of complex approaches vis a vis her oeuvre.
Through her exhibition statement, Afaf captures her innermost values best, when she writes: “My life in art is a perpetual return to what resonates within me and what prompts me to open gates into unknown gardens: to plant and to weed, to prune and to cultivate, both senses and thoughts into a coherent, organic and complex whole. As I move forward I always return to what underlies my direct experience: a shaft of light. A memory of closeness. The feel of earth as I descend an old staircase. The wind. Riding a wave. Saying something ‘right’. Being a part. Forming a whole.”
