With Huda Lutfi on dreams and silence
Chapter 1: The Artist
With her small figure, short cropped hair and small feet, the artist doesn’t take up much space, and yet in a room of 100 you can’t miss her. She stood in the gallery, like a mecca for the traffic of viewers here to see her latest artwork. Some people knew her well, others were just about to.
At 75, Huda Lutfi’s art practice is still as raw and relevant as ever. Her honesty is coupled with a quiet reserve that gives her an air of grace and mystery reflected in the works of this latest solo.
Our eyes meet in the crowd, she smiles and walks over.
I remind myself that she doesn’t prefer hugs.
“Hey. Would love to talk but it’s so difficult on opening day,” she says, rolling her eyes in exasperation. Her grey-green eyes seem weary, but twinkle with warmth behind her red glasses, matching with her crimson wool scarf thrown casually across her shoulders.
I barely have time to smile back and respond before she is swept in the tide: friends congratulating, strangers with questions, journalists and media vying for attention to get a word from the artist. It’s all too loud for a show about dreams and silence.
Chapter 2: The Commotion
Ten minutes earlier, to get to Tahrir Cultural Center for the opening, I was rushing past the overwhelming street traffic and noise that characterizes Downtown Cairo, the backdrop that informs much of Huda’s work. I rushed past the police officers from her 2010 collages, past vitrines and store fronts with the mannequins she very often uses, some dolled up and over dressed, others with broken limbs balanced awkwardly against each other. But more significantly, I rushed past bodies and bodies and bodies of people, past the eyes, and lips and ears of the city. I rushed past stories and dreams I know nothing about.
I reach the gallery and find most of these elements in her collages and installations. The police officers though have disappeared.
Whether critiquing her surroundings or retreating from them, Huda has always looked at the city, it’s elements and happenings, and responded to that in her art. In a detour, or perhaps a consequence, of the socio-political subjects she presented up until 2015, Huda is getting personal and emotive in this new solo. I feel myself get pulled into her personal world, her meditations on different forms of silence.