Majd Abdel Hamid is a visual artist from Palestine. He was born in Damascus in 1988, and is currently based between Beirut and Ramallah. He graduated from Malmö Art Academy, Sweden (2010) and attended the International Academy of Art in Palestine (2007-2009).
He works in a broad variety of media, including video, installation, drawing and sculpture, through which he explores themes of national identity and trauma. His artistic practice is rooted in the slow, repetitive, performative gesture, including embroidery and cross-stich on fabric supports, as a counterbalance to high-speed digital image production and pixels.
“Palestinian artist Majd Abdel Hamid works chiefly through the medium of small-scale, often abstract and colorful embroideries, employing simple, humble materials worked with great delicacy. As a self-taught embroiderer, Hamid’s works are the fruit of a slow, laborious act of making, conceived as “sculptures in time” rather than demonstrations of virtuosic skill.
The hand-stitched works are artisanal, even amateur in feel. Each is a record of its own imperfections, hesitations, and omissions that leaves visible the raw fabric of the support. The motifs – often unfinished – seem to derive from the history of modern art, from monochrome works to geometric abstraction and expressionism. Occasionally, figurative motifs evoke scenes from documentary news footage, or portraits – reconstituted stitch by stitch, as if pixelated. Majd Abdel Hamid’s work encompasses both radical abstraction and an activist political stance, and offers a profound, open-ended reflection on the artist’s role as a mediator of social issues, through a practice that is by turns compulsive, therapeutic, and resilient.” Guillaume Désanges
Majd Abdel Hamid solo exhibitions include Muscle Memory, CCA: Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; 800 meters and a corridor, gb agency, Paris (2022); A Stitch in Time, Fondation d’Entreprise Hermès, Brussels curated by Guillaume Desanges (2021).
Majd Abdel Hamid’s work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Memory Sews Together Events That Hadn’t Previously Met, Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah; Splendid Isolation, SMAK, Ghent; La Beauté du Diable, Frac Franche-Comté, Besançon (2022); Répare, Reprise, Cité International des Arts, Paris, (2021); Heartbreak, Ruya Maps,Venice; Touché! (gesture, movement, action),BeirutArt Center,Beyrouth,(2019);at Krognoshuset Lund in Sweden (2016),theValencia Institute of Modern Art in Spain and the Halil Saakini Cultural Center in Palestine (2018).
He has taken part in several international residencies and workshops, including March Project (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2015), Former West (Berlin, Germany, 2013) and Truth is Concrete (Granz, Austria, 2012). Hamid worked in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2009. He was a finalist for the Young Artist of the Year Award, presented by the A.M. Qattan Foundation, in 2008, 2010, and 2012.
Solo exhibitions:
2022
- 800 Meters and a Corridor, gb agency, Paris
- Muscle Memory, Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow
2021
- A Stitch in Time, Fondation d’Entreprise Hermès, Brussels
Selected group exhibitions
2022
- La beauté du Diable, Frac Franche-Comté, Besançon, France
- Ubuntu – Textile memory, Heirloom, Copenhagen, Danemark
- Display of the Barjeel art collection, Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah, UEA
- Splendid Isolation, SMAK, Ghent, Belgium
- The Memory in our Bones, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UEA
- Dance of Life, gb agency, Paris, France
2021
- Répare, Reprise, Cité International des Arts, Paris, France
- Koroška galerija likovnih umetnosti, Gradec, Slovenia
2019
- Heartbreak, Ruya Maps,Venice, Italy
- Touché! (gesture, movement, action), Beirut Art Center, Beyrouth, Lebanon
2018
- Inhabiting the Mediterranean,Valencia Institute of Modern Art,Valencia, Spain
- DEBT, Qalandiya International, halil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah, Palestine
- Labor of Love, the Palestinian Museum, Birzeit, Palestine
- In Search of the Miraculous, Kathmandu Triennial, Kathmandu, Nepal 2017
- Unraveled, Beirut Art Center, Beirut, Lebanon 2016
- VERNISSAGE Majd Abdel Hamdi and Oscar Guermouche, Krognoshuset Lund, Lund, Sweden 2016
- March Project, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates 2015
- La Neumuller & Majd Abdel Hamid, Norrlandsoperan, Norrland, Sweden 2013
- “Shubbak” – A window into contemporary Arab culture, Mosaic Rooms, London, United Kingdom 2013
- Errors Allowed, Mediterranea 16,Ancona, Italy 2012
Qalanidya International/ YAYA, French Cultural Center, Ramallah, Palestine 2012 - De Ramallah et Gaza, Beaux-Arts de Toulouse,Toulouse, France 2011
- Escape, Lund Konsthall, Lund, Sweden 2011
Email: Majd.hamid@gmail.com
Interviews/ and texts
Tamara Chalabi
“I HAVE AN ITCH, I HAVE A STITCH”
This letter is the result of my discussions with Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez for Palm
https://jeudepaume.org/en/i-have-an-itch-i-have-a-stitch/
https://ruyafoundation.org/en/2017/03/4727/
