CAIRO.- In an unprecedented tour de force, Ubuntu Art Gallery showcases for the first time “The River”, a large-scale and hugely significant painting by artist Mutaz Elemam.

Executed over a span of five months and completed in March 2011, this is a work of monumental magnitude that spans 203 cm in height and 735cm in width.

The work itself holds a personal importance to Elemam and has been kept until now as part of his own personal collection.

“The River” is a stand-alone achievement and is a seminal painting that heralded the artist’s subsequent body of works; “Memories of The Nile” and “Unyielding River”, through which he explores not only the vegetative and animal life of the river but celebrates its glory and perenniality through his own distinctive visual idiom.

Engaging and engulfing by its sheer size, tactile in its textural brushstrokes and dizzying in its chromatic intensity, “The River” reflects the artist’s highly personal painterly style and his aesthetic sensibilities. Elemam’s aspiration is far from intent on depicting an objective reality but rather, through his dynamic and gestural application of paint he conjures the freshness and happiness of memories and the boundless physical energy of “his” favourite river.

Mutaz Elemam was born and raised in Kassala in the Eastern region of Sudan until he went to Khartoum to study Fine Arts at the Sudan University of Science and Technology.

Between 2003 and 2007 he worked in Art Therapy at the Grace Child Care Organization in Khartoum, an establishment that lodges and teaches young survivors of wars and adverse social circumstances until they reach the age of adolescence.
His artistic practice encompasses painting, drawing, mixed media and collage.

He has participated in numerous solo and collective exhibitions regionally and internationally the most recent of which were “Collage: 100 Years On” at The Gallery, Cairo in 2011-2012 ; the 5th Beijing Biennale in September 2012 and “Art…Freedom” at the Zamalek Art Gallery in January 2013; “CMYK” February 2014 at Tache Art Gallery; “Sound Interpretations” December 2014 at Gallery Misr; ”Selfie” February 2015 at Cordoba Gallery ,Cairo ,Egypt; “Unyielding River” December 2016 at Ubuntu Art Gallery, Cairo, Egypt.

He was the editor of the Africa Art file for the “Not Apartheid Art” Cam Casoria art magazine.

Elemam works closely with his art curator Dr. Maie Yanni and is represented by Ubuntu Art Gallery locally and internationally.

He currently lives and maintains a studio in Cairo , Egypt.

“The River” is currently showing at Ubuntu Art Gallery Swan Lake premises- Greater Cairo, Egypt until 30 November 2017.