Rebecca Anne Proctor met Mohamed Abla at Tabari in DIFC for Harper's Bazaar Arabia as he prepared The Silk Road, the first exhibition after the gallery relaunched under its new name.
Proctor finds Abla cutting forms from long strips of dyed paper in the newly relaunched gallery. For the exhibition he researched Iraq, Syria, China, Russia and India, countries linked by the ancient trade route, and he tells her that trade once carried printing, religion, language and technology between peoples. "Why not create the Silk Road again?" he asks.
The works bring to life folklore from North Africa, the Levant, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Paper shapes become animals, heroes and princesses, as in The Copper City (2016 to 2017), where copper toned horsemen stand on high columns, or The White Horse (2016). Abla also describes a new technique of painting on water and lifting the image onto paper.
The profile traces his life: a childhood drawing against his father's wishes, studies in Alexandria, graphics in Switzerland and Austria, and his return to Egypt, where he took part in the 2011 revolution. The Silk Road, he says, is about a fairy tale world rather than war, though it still carries a wish for social change.
By 2017 Abla had worked with the gallery for more than ten years, and The Silk Road remains one of the defining exhibitions of our relaunch.
