00:00My name is Samar Kamel. I'm an artist and a writer. I'm the curator for World Art Dubai.
00:06And we are here, and welcome to my studio.
00:10So this painting, these two paintings are unfinished paintings.
00:14This one is, the teabag is the one I told you about.
00:17And I discovered this technique by coincidence because I love drinking tea every afternoon.
00:25And one day I was just, you know, squeezing the teabag like we always do.
00:30And it just got torn.
00:32And I looked at the teabag and I loved the pigment.
00:36So I started collecting the teabags, like here.
00:40Let me show you.
00:44So here, as you see, I have all the teabags.
00:46All teabags.
00:47Yeah.
00:48I collect them and then when they dry, I just open the teabag.
00:52And then I get rid of the leaves.
00:54Yeah.
00:55And then I let them dry like this.
00:57Okay.
00:58And then after that, I sketch whatever I want.
01:03So you just like sketching them?
01:05No, I sketch on my canvas.
01:07And then after sketching on the canvas, I just start sticking it on the canvas and I start painting it.
01:16So this one is made with teabags.
01:19The face.
01:20The face of the woman.
01:21The face of the woman.
01:22Is made with teabags.
01:23Ah, okay.
01:24Those girls are made with teabags.
01:26Wow.
01:27This one as well.
01:28It's because it's close to the color of the skin.
01:30Yeah, the pigment is close to our skin.
01:32So I just add tiny colors like white, yellow, ochre, and little bit of brown.
01:39These two as well are made with teabags.
01:41It's a place where I just empty my mind.
01:45But it differs.
01:47If I have an exhibition, so I might spend like 10 hours painting.
01:53Like before World Art Dubai, I had this series.
01:56It's called La Vie.
01:58It's this one, and this one, and this one.
02:02It's basically a circus.
02:05Ah, okay.
02:06So I see life as a circus, so you can see this one.
02:09It's like the clown and the juggler.
02:13The juggler is like mainly multitasking.
02:16I'm not going to be a fanatic, radical feminist and say like women multitask.
02:22Because all of us, we're multitasking right now.
02:24And this one, the woman who is blindfolded on a darting board.
02:30And she's placed on a carousel.
02:34It's mainly all of us.
02:36We're going round and round.
02:39When she's blindfolded and with the knives just hitting her.
02:46Mainly, it's still all of us.
02:49Because sometimes you just don't know where the stab is getting hit.
02:55You don't know who's going to hit you.
02:58And the clown, the sad clown.
03:00It's a cliche, but you know.
03:02Again, I'm not going to be saying that I'm a feminist.
03:05But I do care a lot about women's issues and struggles.
03:10So my paintings and my books are mainly about women.
03:14So I have two books.
03:16Her Secret Garden and Republic of the Women.
03:19They are in bookstores in Egypt.
03:23And one of them is here in Coney Konya Dubai Mall.
03:27So here they are.
03:29This book is Hadikata Siraya, which means Her Secret Garden.
03:34And it's ten stories.
03:37And they are inspired by real women.
03:40So these are real stories.
03:42Stories about women around me.
03:46And it's...
03:48I don't want to say they are sad, but they are real.
03:51And these 15 short stories.
03:5515 short stories.
03:57It's Republic of the Women.
03:59And these are inspired by my paintings.
04:03So each painting has a story.
04:09I've been the curator for World Art Dubai for four years now.
04:13And it's one of the most important art events in the region.
04:20Because it's an international and affordable art fair.
04:25It hosts around...
04:27This time we had like 4,000 paintings.
04:31And we had around 50 international countries.
04:38Yeah.
04:39And this edition was the 8th edition.
04:43And we were the only art fair that hosted this event during 2020.
04:52All the other events were cancelled.
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