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MALIHEH AFNAN
MALIHEH AFNAN | FRIEZE MASTERS | Booth S-22 | Spotlight
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MALIHEH AFNAN: TRACES, PLACES, FACES
In Conversation with Rose IssaMaliheh Afnan
Traces, Faces & Places March 7, 2014Artist Maliheh Afnan explores her peripatetic life through this series of exquisitely rendered evocative images that reference notions of home, history and personal experience. -
“The basic colors in my work, especially in my landscapes, are earth colors. They almost look like they have been excavated […] I come from a place where there are relics of old civilizations—layers and layers of old civilizations, whether it is Lebanon or Palestine. It is maybe inevitable that somehow I am drawn to this kind of thing.”
— Maliheh Afnan, via ArtAsiaPacific, 25 February 2016.
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Afnan’s practice was informed by her experience at the intersection of Arab, Persian, and Western cultures, and by a lifelong resistance to identification with any single place or tradition. As Afnan reflected, she did not possess “a single identifying root”; instead, her work drew upon an accumulation of places, encounters, and histories. While studying in Washington D.C., Afnan encountered the work of American painter Mark Tobey, whose use of calligraphic abstraction resonated with her own developing interest in script and mark-making. The two later met in Basel in 1971, beginning an important early connection in Afnan’s career.
The Paysages and Ecritures works of the 1970s and 1980s are characterised by dense, layered surfaces populated by text-like marks and inscriptions. Evoking ancient manuscripts, maps, and archaeological fragments, these markings form a visual language that sits between writing and image, suggesting histories that remain partially visible yet impossible to fully recover.
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Beginning in the 1980s, Afnan increasingly turned towards the human figure through her Personnages series. Her figures and faces appear suspended between different places, eras, and states of mind, resembling a lost archive of presences and identities shaped by the passage of time. As Afnan described, her figures seem to “wear a map of their lives on their faces,” carrying accumulated experiences within their features. The series sits within a broader twentieth-century conversation around psychologically charged portraiture, one that includes artists such as Alberto Giacometti, Jean Dubuffet, and Henri Michaux.
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“When I look at my work, I do not quite know how it has come to be. I never plan my work, I never know beforehand what’s going to come out, it leads me. I enter a dialogue with the work in front of me, it is an inner dialogue, in which I find out where it will take me. I am the editor, I have to find the balance. Equilibrium is as necessary in painting as it is in life.”
— Maliheh Afnan, Tracing Memories (2016).
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AVAILABLE WORKS BY MALIHEH AFNAN
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MAN – MUSEO D’ARTE PROVINCIA DI NUORO
Malieh Afnan: 'Personnages', 15 March - 9 June, 2019 -
In 2019, MAN – Museo d’Arte Provincia di Nuoro in Sardinia, Italy, presented Personnages, the first museum retrospective dedicated to the work of Maliheh Afnan (1935–2016). Curated by Luigi Fassi, the exhibition brought together works spanning several decades of the artist’s practice, exploring themes of memory, displacement, identity and the traces left by personal and collective histories.
The exhibition’s title, Personnages, refers to Afnan’s evocative representations of faces and figures. Neither conventional portraits nor entirely abstract compositions, these enigmatic presences appear to emerge from layers of memory, their features resembling maps marked by movement, fragmentation and time. Through these figures, Afnan gave form to stories that might otherwise remain unseen or forgotten, reflecting on the complexities of belonging and the enduring effects of displacement.
Working across mixed-media drawings, paintings and works on paper, Afnan developed an experimental approach to materials and surfaces. Techniques including glazing, combustion and the layering of pigments allowed her to create richly textured compositions in which marks, erasures and accumulated layers became integral to the work’s meaning. Her practice occupies a space between the intimate and the historical, balancing the weight of lived experience with a sense of ambiguity and quiet contemplation.
Personnages offered an opportunity to encounter the breadth of Afnan’s artistic vision, revealing a body of work that moves beyond autobiography to consider the universal experience of memory, migration and human connection. Accompanied by a catalogue published by Arkadia Editore, featuring contributions by Sussan Babaie, Rose Issa and Luigi Fassi, the exhibition affirmed Afnan’s lasting contribution to contemporary art and her ability to transform fragmented histories into compelling visual narratives.
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MALIHEH AFNAN
(1935–2016)Maliheh Afnan (1935–2016) was born in Haifa to Persian parents and lived in Beirut, Washington DC, Kuwait, Paris and London. She received a BA from the American University of Beirut in 1955 and an MA in Fine Arts from the Corcoran School of Art, Washington DC, in 1962.
Afnan exhibited widely throughout Europe, the Middle East and the United States. Solo exhibitions include Personnages, MAN Museo d’Arte Provincia di Nuoro, Sardinia (2019); Tracing Memories, Art Dubai Modern (2016); Speak Memory, Rose Issa Projects, London (2013); Traces, Faces, Places, Rose Issa Projects, London (2010); Selected Works, England & Co, London (2006); and Maliheh Afnan: Retrospective, England & Co, London (2000). Her work has also been included in major group exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery, London; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris; The Courtauld Gallery, London; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Sharjah Art Museum; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; the British Museum, London; and the Barbican Centre, London.
Her work has been the subject of several publications, including Maliheh Afnan: Traces, Faces, Places (Al Saqi Books & Beyond Art Productions, 2010), Familiar Faces (Rose Issa Projects, 2013), and Personnages: Maliheh Afnan (Arkadia Editore, Cagliari, 2019).
Her work is held in major public collections, including Tate, London; the British Museum, London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris; The Courtauld Institute of Art, London; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; The Written Art Collection, Pinakothek der Moderne, Frankfurt, Germany; and the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah.
Maliheh Afnan passed away in London in 2016.
