LONDON.- The Sunderland Collection announced the opening of a new collaboration with the Paul Mellon Centre, centred around a hang of works by Fathi Hassan, 4 June 2026 to 31 January 2027. The exhibition unfolds across the Centre’s Grade II listed rooms, in an exploration of history, cartography, memory, displacement, and colonialism.

Curated by Beth Greenacre of the Sunderland Collection Art Programme, the hang reflects a shared commitment of both The Sunderland Collection and the Paul Mellon Centre, bringing together contemporary artistic practice and historical research. Both institutions emphasise the role of artist-led inquiry in generating new knowledge and perspectives.

The hang features works of photography, drawing, and mixed media with a core set of works from ‘Shifting Sands’, Fathi’s response to The Sunderland Collection from his participation in the Art Programme in 2024.

The Sunderland Collection comprises maps, atlases, books, and globes dating from the 13th to the early 19th century. Its Art Programme, established in 2024, connects cultural heritage and contemporary artistic practice from around the world. Much like a residency, it invites artists to engage with and respond to pieces from the collection in their preferred medium. Hassan’s participation in the programme has resulted in a powerful new body of work responding to the Collection’s holdings, originally exhibited in Fathi Hassan: Shifting Sands, at No. Cork Street in 2024.

Born in Cairo in 1957 to Egyptian and Nubian parents, Hassan rose to prominence in the 1980s and was among the first artists of African heritage included in the Venice Biennale (1988). Now based in Edinburgh, his multidisciplinary practice spans painting, drawing, photography, and installation, shaped by lived experience across Egypt, Italy, and the UK.

In his response to items from The Sunderland Collection, Hassan explored the layered stories of the cartographic objects, reflecting on themes of displacement and global interconnectedness. The resulting works are richly textured mixed-media compositions combining collage, print, pencil, and gouache, interweaving autobiographical elements with historical references. Recurring motifs include animals from his childhood, crescent moons, and Nubian warriors, alongside symbols of migration such as the felucca boats associated with the flooding of Nubia in 1952.

Displayed throughout the Paul Mellon Centre in the reception and public hallways, the library, seminar room and anteroom, the exhibition invites visitors to encounter the artworks within a working research environment, creating moments of reflection within spaces used for the Centre’s research and events programmes.