Hussein Salim: Imagining - SOLD
Hussein Salim
Imagining – 2009
Acrylic on canvas
180 x 160 cm
Signed and dated bottom right
Sold - 2009
Born 19 September 1966 in Karima, Sudan
Hussein Salim:
For me, art not only evokes memories and contemplation of the loss of home but it also encounters the present, and shapes the future. My work is the product of a rich heritage from my origins in Sudan, my training there, and my recent diasporic experience.
As a Sudanese, my past and present are marred with memories of loss, isolation, migration, exile and forgotten heritage.
Prof. Terence King (Centre for Visual Art, University of KwaZulu Natal) comments:
Hussein Salim’s work, at once spare and welcoming, is a response to histories, recent and old, to personal circumstances and social upheaval.
He paints literal and sometimes very clear signs of where he comes from. These might include the colours of fabrics and of sands, and the styles of the architecture. The expansiveness and the evenness of the terrain and the intensity of the light are all there. The content of Hussein’s work is, only in part, what he chooses to paint and what he invites us to recognise – it is, in large measure, about the act of painting.
Hussein’s application of paint and the incorporation of drawing into painting, while gestural and spontaneous in appearance is not superficially expressive. There is a studied sense of contemplation in the control amid the disorderliness, the archaeology of the painting beneath the designed surface.
Hussein’s painting is essentially an account of moments personally recollected. (It may be that all painting is ultimately autobiographical.) When he tackles memorised fragments he paints his own history as an artist. The outcomes are complex – they look ahead in their reference to creative growth and reflectively or historically to the imagery of past experience.
To view the Hussein Salim web page click here
To view the artist’s CV click here