A selection of paintings by artist Nada Elkalaawy. Elkalaawy’s practice is influenced by personal history, loss, and traces of memories, as well as the desire to challenge ideas of identity, belonging, and attachment using fictional narratives. While primarily a painter, Elkalaawy also works in animation and tapestry. For Elkalaawy, the process of making art is one of introspection and visualising mental images. Some of the questions her work explores is our perceptions of reality, “what causes an image to shift from truth into fiction,” and “the uncanny stages in between.” She is also interested in the idea of multiple possibilities when it comes to interpretation and the subjectivity of storytelling.

“My process begins by collecting images and objects, delving into an archive of materials belonging to my family and sourcing images from the internet. I use this found material to develop sketches and drawings, which form the basis of paintings. I work from recollections of places, people, and objects, then construct imagery that is partly remembered partly imagined, making the work an amalgamation of ideas, memory-aids, and fantasies.”

A central motif in Elkalaawy’s recent works is the cherubic figures (Putti) seen in paintings of the Renaissance and Baroque period as invisible manifestations believed to influence human lives. The works delve into this ghostly yet material (porcelain) presence and eerie hollowness. Viewing the sculptures as vessels holding onto memories or metaphors for the weight of the past, the images explore how meaning and emotion is contained and carried. See more below.