Lot 16

Souad Abdelrassoul (Egyptian, born 1974)
Me and My Thoughts, 2016
Unsigned – comes with a certificate of authenticity
Acrylic on canvas
190 x 104 cm
KES 500,000 – 900,000
(US$) 4,000 – 7,200
Provenance: From the artist’s collection

Souad Abdelrassoul is a storyteller; her paintings use a surrealist visual language to reflect imaginatively on relationships and gender identity. Best known for her paintings and drawings of women, in which she says she tries to, “visualise not so much their physical beauty, but more their secrets, hidden, their special ingredients and silent desires.”

Abdelrassoul graduated with a BFA in 1998 from El Minya University and in 2005 completed her master’s degree in History of Art. In 2012 she completed her PhD in Modern Art History. Since 1998 she has exhibited frequently in group and solo exhibitions in Cairo, Dakar, Beirut, Nairobi and the USA. Her recent exhibitions include Unstable Worlds, Circle Art Gallery, 2024; A Never Ending Longing, Cromwell Place, London, 2022; Behind the River, Circle Art Gallery, Nairobi, 2021; East African Encounters, Cromwell Place, London, 2021. She has exhibited at international art fairs in London, Dubai, Marrakech and at The Armory Show in New York. In 2022 her painting The Magician (2021) was acquired by the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the USA. She is also represented in the collection of the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusettes, USA. Abdelrassoul features in 300 Great Women Painters published in 2022 by Phaidon Press. In 2022 her work was displayed on a banner outside the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre in London.  In 2023 she had solo exhibitions in Cairo and in Dakar and she was a finalist in the Norval Sovereign Art Prize, Cape Town.