Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 8

Hédy Gobaa
Vue d’El Ghazela, Technopole

2022

About the Item

For this exhibition, I wanted to find the coherence of a life shared between different geographies from Tunisia to Canada. Intertwining the imagery of here and there, I ask myself what inside of us makes us alike a city, what is being built than remains. Is it us who occupy places or rather them that occupy us? The title Geoportrait is a term that combines “geography” and “self-portrait”. It describes the way that individual identity is shaped by our relationship to space. The theme of the exhibition also comes from the observation of this back and forth between crowds of confused identities, as if the body was a cloak furrowed contrary currents. Always living elsewhere, I had to be reborn and disappear successively. In the experience of migration, whatever the age, whatever the past, there are as much reappearances as there are losses of self. By juxtaposing the paintings of three series the exhibition suddenly evokes immigration, but above all human destinies, the political complexity of the world, the reality of differences, the impossible appropriation of territory. It seeks to draw a portrait of a contemporary world where the human figure is absent, but which we grasp in its desire to inhabit, to imagine, to locate. The paintings in the series The Narrow Side of Distance were created from hyperrealistic photomontages combining fragments of landscapes from Tunisia and Quebec. The West is represented by references such as a bulk carrier (a carrier boat on the St. Lawrence), a cottage, snow, and this is grafted for example to the vegetation of southern Tunisia, the desert. The crazy Western power disrupts the world socially, economically, ecologically, and sometimes destroys it. The series Dwell, as for it, refers to the urban extension of Tunis which always progresses towards somewhat wild and abandoned areas. The series deals with the idea of the transformation of unoccupied land into settled and standardized places. It is a metaphor for the effort of domestication that I was confronted with when I arrived in Canada, but also of a dialogue between the self and the elsewhere, between the being and the anguish of emptiness. Finally, the Thousand Nights series evokes the political reality of the Arab world. It proposes a poetic reading of the situation of the people living there, indicating anxieties, but also the instinct of resilience and joy. For this, the paintings rely on an evocative iconography: the backhoe that destroys without ever finishing anything; the stray dogs and cats, resilient companions; the lion, figure of arbitrary domination, the struggle; the mosaics of public and private spaces; the head of an ox, an animal consumed or sacrificed religiously, a symbol of the Arab revolution, for me.
  • Creator:
    Hédy Gobaa (1979, Canadian)
  • Creation Year:
    2022
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 38 in (96.52 cm)Width: 66 in (167.64 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Montreal, CA
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU47612036972

More From This Seller

View All
Djerba, été 2007
By Hédy Gobaa
Located in Montreal, Quebec
For this exhibition, I wanted to find the coherence of a life shared between different geographies from Tunisia to Canada. Intertwining the imagery of here and there, I ask myself wh...
Category

2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Untitled
By Hédy Gobaa
Located in Montreal, Quebec
For this exhibition, I wanted to find the coherence of a life shared between different geographies from Tunisia to Canada. Intertwining the imagery of here and there, I ask myself wh...
Category

2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Rappelle-toi… baisse tes yeux
By Hédy Gobaa
Located in Montreal, Quebec
For this exhibition, I wanted to find the coherence of a life shared between different geographies from Tunisia to Canada. Intertwining the imagery of here and there, I ask myself wh...
Category

2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

L’enfer de l’autre
By Hédy Gobaa
Located in Montreal, Quebec
For this exhibition, I wanted to find the coherence of a life shared between different geographies from Tunisia to Canada. Intertwining the imagery of here and there, I ask myself wh...
Category

2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Everett, Montréal, 2013
By Hédy Gobaa
Located in Montreal, Quebec
For this exhibition, I wanted to find the coherence of a life shared between different geographies from Tunisia to Canada. Intertwining the imagery of here and there, I ask myself wh...
Category

2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Vraquier, port de Montréal, 2022
By Hédy Gobaa
Located in Montreal, Quebec
For this exhibition, I wanted to find the coherence of a life shared between different geographies from Tunisia to Canada. Intertwining the imagery of here and there, I ask myself wh...
Category

2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

You May Also Like

Raw Poetic Canvas Portrait, 2023 "Marguerite et les autres"
Located in Bruxelles, BE
Juliette Lemontey (b. 1975, Metz, France) is a French artist based in Arles. Her work is an intimate exploration of the human presence, capturing both the weight and fragility of the...
Category

2010s Contemporary Portrait Paintings

Materials

Textile, Canvas, Charcoal, Cotton Canvas, Oil, Carbon Pencil

Woman Drawing
By Christopher Mudgett
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Woman Drawing, 2023 Christopher Mudgett In Woman Drawing (2023), Christopher Mudgett offers a quietly powerful portrayal of a woman absorbed in the act of creation. Executed in his...
Category

2010s Contemporary Abstract Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Contemporary Figurative Oil Painting, Dreamers II
Located in Vilnius, LT
Serenity, warmth, and harmony are at the heart of Dreamer, a captivating oil on canvas painting that invites reflection and a sense of peace. The work portrays a figure with closed e...
Category

2010s Contemporary Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Cotton Canvas

Contemporary Figurative Oil Painting, Dreamers I
Located in Vilnius, LT
Serenity, warmth, and harmony are at the heart of Dreamer, a captivating oil on canvas painting that invites reflection and a sense of peace. The work portrays a figure with closed e...
Category

2010s Contemporary Portrait Paintings

Materials

Cotton Canvas, Canvas, Oil

Trees 21 October 09:49 - Modern Nature Painting, Landscape, Forest, Contemplativ
By Robert Motelski
Located in Salzburg, AT
Robert Motelski's paintings are exceptional visions of nature, visions of space which surrounds us. They tell about being, fate and passing. They depend on the season of year, the ti...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

To look at oneself in the vicinity Hélène Duclos Contemporary art landscape
By Hélène Duclos
Located in Paris, FR
Oil paint on canvas Unique work Hand-signed by the artist The red necklace of the naked Queens “My artistic research has expanded over the years, crossing paths already traveled a...
Category

2010s Contemporary Landscape Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Recently Viewed

View All