sHAZA KHALID
Shaza Khalid Shaza Khalid represents the kind of artist Luxor Art Gallery is eager to support. Her artwork reveals an impressive natural talent, with a sophisticated palette and intriguing compositions. Her portfolio of artwork—including intimate portrait sketches and still-lifes that display her fantastic flare for colors and confident linework—is certainly that of a young artist finding her voice and vision. But it takes only a few extraordinary images to leave us yearning for more. Her finest pieces are courageous and distinctive, and have the unique quality of leading the viewer to ponder and imagine. In one painting, our eye climbs and descends a mountainous formation of drapery with a trail of Siwa-inspired embroidered patterns crossing it, only the fingers of the hands which appear from the folds reveal a human form; while below, the hills and summits continue in the form of four figures, their backs to the viewer, for there are no faces here. In an adjoining painting full of collage elements both minimal and decorated, five faceless female figures ascend a hill. Both paintings are as revealing and hidden as the women themselves: we see them yet they show us nothing of themselves, and they blend into the landscape as though born from it. Traditions and rural Egypt with its stark environments contrasting with the human flicker of colors and ornamentation, breathe through these images. Luxor Art Gallery hopes to encourage and help sustain young, brilliant artists like Shaza by providing an audience and support, so that she will continue to surprise and captivate us with her artwork for years to come. —D.N.
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