Souad Abdelrassoul: Behind The River: Circle Art Gallery
Souad Abdlrassoul currently lives and works in Cairo. Her artistic practice spans various media; drawing, painting, sculpture and graphic design.
'Behind the River' is Souad's first solo exhibition at Circle Art Gallery and follows her very successful recent exhibition at Art Dubai.
Working between the abstract and figurative, she connects human and animal figures to the Earth believing we are a part of it. Her metamorphosed figures do not seek to depict physical beauty but attempt to reflect on the connections between the human race and the natural elements of life; earth, metal, animals and plants. 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. Abdlrassoul re-conceptualizes the way we perceive space and re-purposes notions of form, science and nature into something strikingly personal, she exalts in the feminine, the emotional and nature. Throughout her work, she tells stories, sometimes using myths and legends that we recognise, to draw attention to how women are forced to evolve and grow in an environment that is oppressive and that restricts the life choices. She questions the role of women in society and cultural history in an unusual and disruptive way.
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."You can't put your foot in the same river twice, the water changes as you change.The river reflects different moons and the sun, the river is just like us.I come from its source, sharing its flow, reaching its estuary. I am his journey, his anger, his revolt, his deluge, and his receding. The river is me... my journey through life.Perhaps it is not my journey alone. Perhaps it's the journey of every human on earth. The river resembles us. It confronts as we are facing. It explores new areas as our constant exploring desire. The river is the pioneering adventurer and the instigator from whom we learned that stagnant water spoils.I envisage the river as the trusted keeper that holds all human secrets and dreams. When we are born, we are carried to it. When we cry, we go to it. When we love we walk by it too, and when we die, I believe our souls inevitably go to it." text by Sahar Behairy
