Souad Abdelrassoul: Unstable Worlds: Circle Art Gallery
"Loneliness is not as terrifying as you think. I was closer and more honest with myself when I was there, to get rid of the hustle and bustle of excess things and people. You become above everything except this loneliness I am now alone, I am now free."
In the struggle and catharsis of making over the past year, Souad drew closer to herself, her work and purpose, foregrounding relationships with animals and more broadly the natural world for companionship, the final painting completed for the exhibition Safe Nap, encapsulating this period.
Lives and works in Cairo
"Loneliness is not as terrifying as you think. I was closer and more honest with myself when I was there, to get rid of the hustle and bustle of excess things and people. You become above everything except this loneliness I am now alone, I am now free."
In a year of rupture and dislocation in the world and in her personal and relational life, Souad turned inwards into a solitary studio practice. From this intense period of solitude and self-reflection, Unstable Worlds emerges, featuring paintings made between 2022 and 2024.
In the struggle and catharsis of making over the past year, Souad drew closer to herself, her work and purpose, foregrounding relationships with animals and more broadly the natural world for companionship, the final painting completed for the exhibition Safe Nap, encapsulating this period.
Souad Abdelrassoul (Egyptian, b. 1974). Her practice spans various media, incorporating drawing, painting, sculpture and graphic design. Working between the abstract and figurative, she intertwines human, animal and vegetal forms, believing we are all intrinsically connected to the earth. Tree-like figures with branching veins and arteries, and giant insect-like creatures, merge on her canvases to remind the viewer of the vital bond between our internal lives and the exterior world we live in.
Adopting a surrealist touch, Abdelrassoul’s paintings exalt in the feminine and the emotional. They explore the idea of the modern woman, informed by her own experiences of living within a patriarchal society. Many of her motifs address these issues, whilst also making reference to artists and practices that she admires. Reflecting on her experiences as a mother, Abdelrassoul draws attention to the ways women evolve and adapt in oppressive environments. Often using familiar myths and legends, she paints stories through her figures that question the roles women hold in society and cultural history in disruptive and thought-provoking ways. By reconceptualizing perceptions of space, she repurposes notions of form, science and nature into strikingly personal configurations.
Souad Abdelrassoul received her BFA from El Minya University in 1998, a masters degree in Art History in 2005, and a PhD in Modern Art History in 2012. She has exhibited widely since the late 1990s, with solo shows in Cairo, Dakar, and Nairobi, including Behind the River, 2021 and Unstable Worlds, 2024, at Circle Art Gallery. Recent group exhibitions include East African Encounters, Cromwell Place, London, 2021; A Never Ending Longing Cromwell Place, London, 2022; Like a Single Pomegranate, Almas Foundation at the Fitzrovia Gallery, London, 2023, accompanied by a mongraph of the same name. Her work has been shown at art fairs in London, Dubai, Marrakech, as well as The Armory Show in New York in 2022. That same year, her work was commissioned for the facade of the Hayward Gallery in London and she was featured in Phaidon’s 300 Great Women Painters. In 2023, she was a finalist for the Norval Sovereign African Art Prize in Cape Town. In 2025 she is part of the group exhibition Finding my Blue Sky curated by Omar Kholeif at Lisson Gallery, London.
Abdelrassoul’s work is featured in the collections of the Worcester Art Museum, Chazen Museum and the Fortress House Museum.
