Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Fathi Hassan artist

Fathi Hassan was born into a Nubian-Egyptian family in Cairo, Egypt on 10 May 1957, after his family were displaced with the creation of Lake Nasser in 1952. He was educated in Egypt and in Italy (via a scholarship) and initially used his art to work as a commercial illustrator in Cairo. Hassan subsequently lived in Italy and Iraq before settling in Edinburgh, Scotland in 2018, already an established artist working with image and text prior to his migration to the UK.

Born: 1957 Cairo, Egypt

Year of Migration to the UK: 2018


Biography

Artist Fathi Hassan was born into a Nubian-Egyptian family in Cairo, Egypt on 10 May 1957. His father, Hassan, came from Sudan, while his mother, Fatma, was from the Toshka Lakes area in southern Egypt. Hassan's family, along with many others, were displaced from their Nubian homeland with the creation of Lake Nasser, a consequence of the completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1952. The matriarchal culture of his family of origin has deeply marked Hassan as a man and artist. He was first educated at Kerabia School in Cairo, where he met Ghaleb Khater, considered a Third-Generation Egyptian pioneer artist. During this period, Hassan lived with his family on Sulaiman Basha Street, a vibrant cultural area filled with cinemas and theatres. As a young man, Hassan worked in the Madbuli bookshop and developed an interest in Russian writers, including Fyodor Dostoevsky and Maxim Gorky, and for the works of Sigmund Freud and Bertolt Brecht. After this experience he began working in an Iraqi bookshop, while also connecting to Egyptian writers such as Yahia Eltaher Abballa and Wahid Hamed. The owner of the Iraqi bookshop admired Hassan’s drawings and suggested he apply for a position as a commercial illustrator at the Ministry of Entertainment in Baghdad. He did so and worked there from 1977 to 1978.

In 1979, Hassan won a scholarship grant from the Italian Cultural Institute in Cairo to study in Naples and he soon enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti (1980-84). His graduation thesis was on the influence of African art and Cubism. While still at university he was also employed both as an actor and set designer in Rome and Naples for the Italian national public broadcasting company, RAI. While in Italy he lived or worked in the cities of Fano, Milan, Naples, Sardegna, Pesaro, and Rome. During his time in Italy Hassan was the first Artist of African heritage to be included in the Aperto part of the Venice Biennale in 1988. Throughout his Italian period, Hassan regularly exhibited across the country, and for a time, he worked between Italy and the UK. In 2018, he immigrated to Edinburgh, Scotland and permanently settled there.

Hassan oeuvre consists of mixed-media works, often paintings, drawings and installations, with the ambiguity of language as the central theme. In his vibrant compositions, Hassan incorporates symbols, textures, and colours into calligraphic forms, often juxtaposed with organic shapes, such as human faces, foliage, and celestial bodies, to explore the intersection between graphic symbolism and literal meaning. His invented and purposefully unreadable calligraphy is Kurfic-inspired, thus evoking the feel of Arabic script, with the colour and graphics influenced by his Nubian heritage. The indecipherable calligraphy engages the viewer with the notions of alienation and incomprehensibility of an unfamiliar language and culture. This deliberate obfuscation represents the power dynamics that exist between oral and written traditions, underscoring the cultural disconnection experienced under colonialism.

Hassan often creates dream-like scenarios on the themes of migration, memory, belonging and loss. Several of his exhibitions directly speak to the concepts of movement and migration, including his 2007 solo show, Migration of Dreams held at Antichi Forni in Macerata in Italy. His 2014 exhibition, Migration of Signs, which opened at the Williams College Museum of Art in Massachusetts, USA, was a collection of his works created over a span of five years. The exhibits functioned as metaphors for both internal spiritual journeys and external watershed political changes, such as the Arab Spring and transnational migration. The artist's aim was to emphasises the fluidity of interpretation, in other words, mirroring the idea of migration as a global concept with the idea that meaning ‘migrates’. Dedicated to his mother, Hassan's 2024 exhibition I Can See You Smiling Fatma blended his signature calligraphic style with vibrant imagery inspired by his Nubian roots. This was followed by Fathi Hassan: Shifting Sands at Number 9 Cork Street, London, presented by The Sunderland Collection. Both exhibitions explored themes of displacement, the complexities of diasporic identity, and how our understanding of heritage evolves.

Hassan lives and works in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is represented by Richard Saltoun in London. Currently (2024) most of the research on Hassan is available in Italian. In the UK public domain his work is held in the collection of the British Museum, London.

Related books

  • Rose Issa, Fathi Hassan (London: Beyond Art Production, 2010)
  • Roberto Bencivenga, Fathi Hassan: la sostanza dell'anima = Spirit Matter, exh. cat. (Senigallia: Ed. Della Rovere, 2002)
  • Eriberto Eulisse, 'Images of Writing, Writing of Images: The Work of Fathi Hassan', Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Vol. 15, 2001, pp. 30-37
  • Achille Bonito Oliva, Fathi Hassan, exh. cat. (Milan: Charta Art Books, 2000)
  • Mary Angela Schroth, Sandra Federici and Andrea Marchesini Reggiani, TransAfricana: artisti contemporanei, exh. cat. (Bologna: Lai-momo, 2000), pp. 47-49, 72-73
  • Massimo Bignardi, Fathi Hassan (Udine: Campanotto, 1988)

Public collections

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Fathi Hassan: Shifting Sands (solo exhibition), The Sunderland Collection/No.9 Cork Street, London (2024)
  • I Can See You Smiling Fatma (solo exhibition), Richard Saltoun, London (2024)
  • Soul Taming (solo exhibition), Sulger-Buel Gallery, London (2021)
  • 1:54 Contemporary Art Fair (group show), Sulger-Buel Gallery, London (2021)
  • Migration of Signs (solo exhibition), Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown (2014–5)
  • Egyptology (group show), The British Museum, London (2013)
  • Faces & Voices, John Rylands Library, Manchester (2012)
  • Signs of Our Times (solo exhibition), Rose Issa Projects/Leighton House Museum, London (2011)
  • History of Containers (solo exhibition), Benciv Art Gallery, Pesaro (2006)
  • Aperto 88, (solo exhibition), Venice Biennial, Venice (1988)
  Fathi Hassan
   
Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Fathi Hassan]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Fathi Hassan] in the Ben Uri Library