CAIRO.- “The Sum Of All Parts” is a “dialogue” between the works of two artists; Adel Haroun , a ceramicist, and Maie Yanni, a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice straddles collage, artists books and crochet lacework .

The exhibition showcases works in all the above disciplines and highlights what unifies both artists visual language, their conceptual approach and how they go about their creative process while spurring the conversation, yet again, about craft versus fine art.

Mindfully executed to the last detail, nothing is left to chance in a long and laborious process of “fragmentation” and “reconstruction”; both artists work from first principles preparing their own pigments and substrates all the way to the reconstituted final work.

Both Haroun and Yanni are based in Cairo, a city rich in history, heritage and ornament that bears in its meshwork and physiognomy an eclectic “collage” in its own right. “Artists are always affected by their environments even if only subconsciously, this is a city at the crossroads of civilizations, facets of these influences are bound to permeate our work ’’; both artists concur on that statement.

Haroun’s two and three-dimensional works are muscular and imposing, reflecting his own visual idiom in what looks like a collage of ornate fragments of ceramic where the formal elements are reminiscent of Yanni’s paper collages. Though classically trained in the long-established craft of manipulating the clay, applying the glazes and firing in traditional and modern kilns, the “assembled whole’’ of his work aims to bring a contemporary vision firmly poised at the nexus of old and new.

In an allusive “nudge” to the Japanese art form of Kintsugi, whereby broken ceramics are carefully mended with a lacquer resin mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum, Haroun purposefully omits the use of precious metals and unapologetically allows the traces and cracks of the initial work to filter through.

While Yanni’s collages add more layers to this dialogue, her crochet laceworks entitled “Threads Of Memory’’ celebrate a precious and meditative skill that she was taught by her late mother and invite us to look at a traditional craft with fresh eyes while keeping the conversation going.

Her “Poemes Simultanes’’ are an outgrowth of her love of poetry and exploration of artist books in her own artistic practice. While underpinning her deep interest in origami - she was a member of The British Origami Society for a number of years - asemic writing, Arabic calligraphy and the gestural quality of man-made marks, the works equally underscore the importance of colour, shape and line in the two works that visually interpret the poems of Gibran Khalil Gibran and Nizar Qabbani; two poets that reflect part of her own genetic heritage.

In many more ways than one, this show is a meeting of two visual artists whose rigorous and painstaking process-based practice brings to the fore the role of craft and its debatable position in the execution of a work of art and how it is perceived in a contemporaneous context.

“The Sum Of All Parts’’ is a two-artist-show of ceramics by Adel Haroun, collages , crochet laceworks and artist books by Maie Yanni, curated by Maie Yanni at Ubuntu Art Gallery and running until 4 May 2019.