421 Arts Campus in Abu Dhabi presents Counting Fingers, the latest art piece by Egyptian multidisciplinary artist Hana El-Sagini. This commissioned large-scale installation including more than 200 fantastical ceramic objects focuses on the instability and fragility of the human experience and invites visitors to immerse themselves in the artist’s personal world. On display in Gallery 1, the artwork will be available for viewing until the 28th of April, 2024.
Counting Fingers reflects El-Sagini’s perspective on trauma and is inspired by the healing process she experienced when she lost her father and when she started a battle with a serious illness later. The installation features surreal sculptures and structures that replicate healthcare spaces (medical waiting rooms, hospital corridors, and doctors’ offices) and transform them into dreamlike sites. The exhibited objects encourage visitors to find joy and humour in imagining a bizarre world where humans, animals, plants, and inanimate objects merge into semi-distinguishable forms and figures.
Exploring the Counting Fingers exhibit, viewers are invited to join El-Sagini’s journey, question, reflect, and find meaning amidst the chaos. It beckons them to think about the inherent mechanisms within our nervous systems that enable us to endure pain, trauma, fear, and adversity. These mechanisms empower us to overcome and internalise trauma in ways that may potentially reconnect us with our vulnerability and our humanity.
About the artist
Hana El-Sagini (b. 1980, Cairo, Egypt), who resides in Düsseldorf (Germany), received a BA in Economics from the Cairo University in 2001. In 2022, she earned an MFA from Institute Art Gender Nature, FHNW (Basel, Switzerland). Her art education also includes participating in the Metafora Workshops for Contemporary Art (Barcelona, Spain) from 2015 to 2016.
The artist obtained an understanding of various materials and disciplines she employs and turns to in her practice. In her paintings, installations, and sculptures, she delves into the themes of memory, trauma, and loss, spotlighting everyday stories, spaces, and objects. The artist employs materiality and scale to create dialogues of opposites and tension within another artwork of hers. El-Sagini also engages with the space where the piece exists and bodies surrounding it to raise a question of significance in relation to the human body.
El-Sagini has headed several solo shows and taken part in some group exhibitions in Egypt as well as across Europe, such as Fedora (Fedora Off Space, Basel, 2022); Regards Egyptiens (Egyptian Cultural Center, Paris, France, 2022); Absence (Coculture, Berlin, 2021); Something Else, International Off Biennale, Darb 1718 (Cairo, 2018), to name a few. The list of the artist’s achievements includes receiving 421 Artistic Development Program Grant (Abu Dhabi, 2023), the Biafarian Art Award, Art Laguna Prize (Italy, 2019), and the Dean Collection Grant Award #tdc20 (USA, 2018).
To learn more about Counting Fingers, please visit the exhibition’s official web page.
You might also be interested in visiting Threads of Existence at Aisha Alabbar Gallery.
