Hamra Abbas, ‘Every Color is a Shade of Black’, 2024, Image courtesy of the artist and Lawrie Shabibi.
We are thrilled to unveil a new iteration of Hamra Abbas' artwork ‘Every Color is a Shade of Black’ which is now on view at Alserkal Avenue as part of Quoz Arts Fest, commencing on 27 January 2024.
Abbas has been working on the framework of ‘Every Color is a Shade of Black’ for several years. It began with ‘Kaaba Picture as a Misprint’ (2014), where she created black by combining the primary colors, i.e. cyan, magenta, and yellow (referencing CMYK printing). Given the visual representation of the Kaaba–Islam’s most revered site for Muslims everywhere in the world–the color black is synonymous with its identity. She remembers thinking to herself, "if the three primary colors can create black, and the same primary colors in various combinations can create all the other colors, then one can surely conclude that every color is a shade of black."
Through this framework, Abbas was able to connect various bodies of her work with the central theme of color: color as faith and ideology, color as race and identity, color as desire and beauty, color as gender and personal relationships.
The artist's monograph under the same name, published by COMO Museum of Art, will be launched in Alserkal Avenue in March 2024.
