The Yousri Scrolls, 2008

Oil on papyrus and carved wood, various sizes
The Knapp Gallery, Philadelphia, USA, 2008
Photography: Bassem Yousri

The Yousri Scrolls was commissioned by the Knapp Gallery in Philadelphia. The gallery’s artistic director, Jeff Frederick, visited my studio at Tyler School of Art and expressed interest in my figurative work — rather than the newer direction I was pursuing at the time, which mixed figuration with cartoon-like figures. I saw the commission as an opportunity: to return to my roots in figurative painting, but with an experimental twist in terms of material.

I began working with oil paint on papyrus and carved wood — my first serious engagement with the painting surface as a sculptural object rather than a neutral ground. This shift was still inflected by the newly found, if tentative, freedom I was discovering in the paintings and drawings I was making concurrently in my studio.

After completing the paintings, I burned parts of the papyrus and wooden frames — inflicting what appears to be the damage of a natural catastrophe, transforming the works into pseudo-ancient artifacts. I thought of it then as an attempt to visualize time: its effect on material, and metaphorically, on the experience of being.