Promise You Made
04 July 2023 - 14 September 2023
In “Promise You Made”, Tamara Al Samerraei produces a new body of work that revisits both familiar and unknown spaces but also the space of painting itself. The exhibition includes her Black Book series in which the artist paints from photographic documentation of her diary of watercolor drawings that she kept between 2020 and 2022, a period characterized by moments of isolation, heartbreak, and recovery. Photography has always been key in the artist’s practice and is a medium through which she is able to “return” to both painting and the spaces she has left or was forced to leave behind. Among the places that Al Samerraei depicts are the walls of her studio, reproducing traces of what remains from a past life and a precarious working space, or what the artist calls the “evidence of work and the evidence of life”.
Beyond physical environments, Al Samerraei also returns to her older paintings which explore the role of figuration, pointing towards the absences that she has experienced in recent years. The paintings in this exhibition all consider the relation of the artist to her own work, the relation between photography and painting, and between experience and reproduction. By re-staging and re-composing them, Al Samerraei lays bare a world bereft of human contact.
A painting of her studio exterior which once served as a refuge is accompanied by musician and composer Jana Saleh’s solo piano piece Soupir (2020). The sound resonates in the space as an homage to a time of convalescence.
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiTake Two, Red Green Buttons , 2023Acrylic paint on canvas160 x 205.5 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist -
Tamara Al-SamerraeiAphrodite, 2023Acrylic paint on canvas160 x 200 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiStudio 1, 2023Acrylic paint on canvas160 x 201 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiStudio 2, 2023Acrylic paint on canvas160 x 203 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiStudio 3 , 2023Acrylic paint on canvas160 x 203 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiStudio 4, 2023Acrylic paint on canvas161 x 190 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 1, 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 108 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 2 , 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 108 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 3 , 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 108 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 4, 223Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 108 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 5, 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 111 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 6, 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 111 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 7, 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 111 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 8, 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 111 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 9 , 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 111 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 10, 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 111 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 11, 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 111 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 12, 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 111 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 13, 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 111 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 14, 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 111 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 15 , 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 111 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 16, 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 111 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 17 , 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 111 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 18 , 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 111 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 19, 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 111 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 20 , 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 111 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 21, 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 111 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 22 , 2023Acrylic paint on canvas85 x 111 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 23 , 2023Acrylic paint on canvas95 x 113 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 24 , 2023Acrylic paint on canvas95 x 113 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 25 , 2023Acrylic paint on canvas95 x 113 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 26 , 2023Acrylic paint on canvas95 x 113 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 27, 2023Acrylic on canvas95 x 113 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 28 , 2023Acrylic paint on canvas95 x 113 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
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Tamara Al-SamerraeiBlack Book 29 , 2023Acrylic paint on canvas113 x 95 cmCourtesy of Marfa’ ProjectsCopyright The Artist
Tamara Al-Samerraei
Born in Kuwait in 1977, Tamara Al-Samerraei is a painter who lives and works in Beirut.She received a BA in Fine Arts from the Lebanese American University in Beirut in 2002and completed the inaugural year of the Home Workspace Program at Ashkal Alwan(2011-2012), Beirut.Her solo exhibitions include What Floats in Space, Marfa’ Projects, Beirut (2019); Let MeStay a Little Longer, Marfa’ Projects, Beirut (2015-2016);Make Room for Me, GypsumGallery, Cairo (2014);Fleeting Fences (2011) and Something White (2008), Agial ArtGallery, Beirut.She has participated in several group and duo exhibitions including HeavenlyBeings:Neiter Human Nor Animal,Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova,+MSUM,Ljubljan(2018);The Clocks are Striking Thirteen, 21,39; Jeddah Home Beirut:Sounding the Neighbours, MAXXI museum, Rome (2017);Tamawuj-Sharjah Biennial13,Sharjah (2017);Play The Possum, Gypsum Gallery, Cairo (2016);Complicity, SultanGallery, Kuwait (2016);On Water, Rosemary and Mercury in Homeworks 7, Beirut(2015);25 Ans De Creativite Arabe, Institut Du Monde Arabe, Paris (2012);All AboutBeirut, White Box, Munich (2010);Exposure, Beirut Art Center, Beirut;Radius of Artproject, Fladernbunker, Kiel (2008) and ShoeBox, Dar Al Funoon, Kuwait (2007).
