Vigo Gallery is proud to present Ibrahim El-Salahi’s Behind the Mask, a group of 99 small works on the back of medicine packets, previously exhibited at Cecilia Alemani’s The Milk of Dreams at The 59th Venice Biennale.
"The mask, apart from being a protective shield, to me feels like a self-imposed sign of silence regarding all things long forgotten, that need to be reawakened in us and relived in the wondering and fascinating act of creativity." - Ibrahim El-Salahi, 2022.
Ibrahim El-Salahi’s Behind the Mask series, created between May 2020 and September 2021, is a distinct group of black and white drawings predominantly in black ink on the back of medicine packets, envelopes and small scraps of paper, a continuation of his current mode of working made famous by his Pain Relief series. This group of 99 small works was previously presented at Cecilia Alemani’s The Milk of Dreams at The 59th Venice Biennale and will be offered individually for sale for the first time this October in London. We are proud to announce that two important Museum Collections will be acquiring over half of the exhibition between them. The remainder will be available for sale individually, with works priced between £4000 and £25,000.
El-Salahi’s Pain Relief Drawings are a series of artworks initiated during a period when the Sudanese ‘Godfather of African Modernism’ started to suffer from chronic back pain, leaving him bedridden for long stretches of time. To cope with the physical pain and immobility, El-Salahi began drawing on small pieces of paper, including medicine packets, using a ballpoint pen. The process became a form of mental and physical relief for him, allowing him to channel his suffering into creative expression and giving him the freedom to continue to commit his ideas and meditations to paper. When drawing, he becomes lost in his work and has a temporary respite from his sciatica, chronic back pain and other ailments. These works are created from the comfort of his armchair, the artist refusing to let physical restriction limit his continuing ambition to communicate. The series has been the subject of many museum shows including Solo Exhibitions at Tegnerforbundet (2022), The Drawing Centre (2022-23), and Kunsthalle Zürich (2023) as well as being included in survey exhibitions at The Ashmolean Museum (2018), Hastings Contemporary (2022), Wellington Arch (2022) and Saatchi Gallery (2019), curated by Vigo. Works from the Pain Relief series are now in the Ashmolean Museums collection, The Smithsonian Institute, Tate Modern and other institutional collections.
‘When I am drawing, my mind is concentrated and I can forget about the pain. [...] It’s a mental thing – when I concentrate, my mind goes from the pain to what I am drawing. Drawing for me is a kind of meditation.
I am surrounded by packets of medicine, so I said, "What a waste. Why don’t I use them?" I started opening them and chopping them to size, and I started working on them. I had a number of pens with waterproof and fade-proof ink, which the material of those kinds of packages takes very nicely.' - Ibrahim El-Salahi, 2019
At 94, El-Salahi continues to make works in this fashion and is able to create this important body of work at a time of huge historical upheaval and uncertainty. These drawings are intimate, small-scale, ambitious, acts of remembrance as well as exploitative at once both meditative and mystical. The Pain Relief Drawings marked a shift in El-Salahi’s artistic style towards more personal, introspective themes, as well as a continued exploration of his fusion of Islamic, African, and Western art influences. Despite their modest scale, the drawings are now a significant body of work spanning 8 years which express the artist’s resilience and creativity in the face of physical suffering.
A key element of the overall Pain Relief project has been his decision to scale up what he calls his ‘Seed' drawings, making unique screenprint paintings which allow him to rescale this intimate imagery. To celebrate the Behind the Mask exhibition, perhaps the most iconic of the images from this series has been transferred directly to calendered linen canvas and the signed unique variants will be available to see by appointment in Mason’s Yard.
In 2013, Ibrahim El-Salahi became the first artist of African birth to be given a full retrospective at Tate Modern. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; The National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; The British Museum, London; Tate Modern, London; The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, UAE; The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Newark Museum, Newark; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; The National Gallery, Berlin and many others. Next year El-Salahi will have a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami and his works will be featured in numerous groups shows ranging from the New Museum, Princeton Museum (who acquired a work from our last exhibition), Toledo Museum, and Pompidou. MoMA’s latest acquisition from earlier this year of the Masterpiece No Shade But His Shade is currently on display in New York, as is Tate Modern’s Reborn Sounds of Childhood Dreams, for those visiting London.
This exhibition at Vigo Gallery offers a rare opportunity to explore El-Salahi’s deeply personal and spiritual body of work, where the artist continues his dialogue between art, suffering, meditations and healing. Vigo Gallery exclusively represents Ibrahim El-Salahi.
For further information, please contact Vigo Gallery at info@vigogallery.com.
At the same time as presenting Behind the Mask at the Mason’s Yard space we are also showing Haraz at Wellington Arch, an exhibition celebrating our tenth anniversary of our first show with Ibrahim, which celebrated his Tree Series. The works are available for collection after the show, and we would encourage appointments during Frieze Week. The space is open to the public from the Wednesday 9th until Sunday 13th, from 10am - 5pm. Vigo curates the Quadriga Galleries at Wellington Arch Museum in a pioneering partnership with English Heritage.