A burst of Light, 2025

A burst of Light, 2025, Mixed media on linen (hibiscus, charcoal, red clay, black clay, soil, oil and wax pastels), 235 × 195 × 4 cm

The paintings from this series come from a personal urgency to engage with the functional necessities of art within ritual practices and the environment. Using spices and powders made from hibiscus, green lalo, ashes, charcoal, paprika, red clay and soil on linen, Ben Hamouda creates textural references to rock and cave surfaces related to art since the dawn of humankind. These visuals are the result of very quick gestures of the hand: the throwing of powders and brushstrokes mimicking Arabic text that the artist has practiced since childhood. The technical skills of the latter draw parallels to the art of calligraphy, wherein the writer keeps a blank page next to the work as a surface to “warm the hand”, thus also becoming a mirror exercise of her steel and iron calligraphic works of the series Aniconism as Figurative Urgency (2021-ongoing).