HIDING
Marwa Adel’s photographs speak about the struggles she has faced in her life. They express her desire to break free from the restrictions imposed on women by society and to be the person that she is rather than what society forces her to be. Her work is deeply personal, but it tells a universal story.
The Egyptian artist has a Master’s degree in advertising and is a lecturer at the Faculty of Applied Art at Helwan University, Cairo. Since the beginning of her career, Marwa has defied traditional norms by using pictures of the human body in her work. And she has won many awards for her bold and powerful creations. Marwa’s artworks combine carefully posed photographs of models with symbols of fragility such as leaves, flowers and torn paper. Her wedding dress and veil also appear in the pictures as a reminder of bitter sweet memories. She also adds digital textures, light effects and pieces of her calligraphic paintings to create beautiful and eloquent compositions.
In “Hiding”, her latest series of photographic works, the artist explores the infinite conflict and the state of contradiction and antagonism that is part of our existence. Once again, she uses the bare human body as a metaphor for the thoughts and feelings hidden inside it. The anonymous women in Marwa’s photographs appear fragile and lonely. Their eyes are covered, yet you can feel the sea of emotions surging within. Their bodies are exposed, yet they conceal their thoughts, desires and feelings. These women represent no one and everyone. But their tense bodies speak about how painful it is to hide the truth.
The black and white colors of the pictures highlight the conflict between the real self of these women and the person they pretend to be. The recurring appearance of her wedding dress symbolizes her marriage which was the turning point in her life, and the impulse to rethink deeply her intimate self, her feelings and objectives of her life.
“Hiding is a universal human phenomenon. We try to hide from fear, pain, darkness or cruelty. And we also hide our feelings, our memories, our happiness and all the precious moments that we are afraid of losing. Sometimes we hide behind masks or walls because we are afraid to confront others or to say or do what we want. But the truth in our soul cannot be hidden”, says Marwa.
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