Vivian Maier at Les Douches la Galerie | booth 4
Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim at Lawrie Shabibi | booth 10
OAF Paris is pleased to highlight two new galleries with solo presentations of artists who have not, for the most part, been previously associated with the field of outsider art/art brut.
Les Douches la Galerie will exhibit the work of American self-taught street photographer, Vivian Maier (1926-2009). Maier spent her life photographing street scenes of Chicago and New York, but her talent remained unacknowledged throughout her life. Working as a nanny, she tirelessly documented the urban experience while also taking striking self-portraits. Her photographs remained unseen until discovered by John Maloof in 2007.
Dubai-based gallery, Lawrie Shabibi will introduce the work of Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim - one of the United Arab Emirates’s first generation of contemporary artists who were active in the 1980s, and one of “the five” who formed The Flying House collective in Dubai, which includes the late Hassan Sharif, his brother Hussain Sharif, Abdullah Al Saadi and Mohamed Kazem. Ibrahim’s art comes from both his personal experiences and the kind of innate memory found in our DNA, which he describes as a “primitive urge.” Featuring 5 bodies of work that span the artist’s engagement with painting, sculpture and collage, the show will highlight his compulsive and intuitive sense of repetition, variation and humor. Ibrahim's exhibition was organized by Paul Laster, ArtAsiaPacific's New York Desk Editor and a frequent contributor to Harper's Bazaar Arabia.