Egyptian artist and educator Nazek Hamdi was celebrated for being a pioneer of the art of batik in the Arab region. Her painting titled The Lotus Girl (1955) features a female protagonist in profile, dressed in a vibrant, patterned sari, wearing a flower crown, and carrying an elegant white lotus flower, native to India. The patterned backdrop of this composition takes the lotus flower as a motif, repeated and juxtaposed with bold geometric forms, pointing to the patterns of traditional batik. Painted the year that Hamdi moved to begin her studies in India, The Lotus Girl is informed by her classical training in India, Indian subjects, as well as the clothing that she herself wore as a student there. Her use of bold black outlines, flat even tones, and stylised, elongated forms can be credited to her specialisation in ancient Oriental arts, miniature painting, mural painting, painting on silk textiles, and the art of batik, which largely inspired her practice. This belongs to a series of works produced in India depicting Indian subjects, including mural paintings at the universities of Tagore and Rajasthan. Hamdi exhibited widely in Egypt and internationally.
This is the first time the work of Nazek Hamdi is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Nadine Nour el Din
