Alia Zaal: I saw the Time Passing (I)

Alia Zaal has responded to Claude Monet’s work which focuses on light and colour. Impressionism, a movement that started at the end of the 19th century and continued to flourish in the 20th century is still relevant to artists today. Zaal started studying colour and light in 2008 where she was keen to understand how her father, who has weak eyesight, sees. In spite of it, he is able to draw daily, constantly, in an impressionist manner. His drawings are composed of marks that reverberate composing images with great light and shadow skills. Inspired by this example and by her own studies and experiments, Alia Zaal has been manipulating images to focus on the most important element, light. During the residency, she continued to paint and photograph subjects focusing on the atmospheric element that play around with the idea of perception, eyesight, ways and means of seeing, and memory.

Less famous than Giverny, Véthueil is a village that hosted Claude Monet and his family from 1878 to 1881 and had a great influence on Monet who painted around 150 paintings during his stay. Vétheuil is the perfect place to study light. There, light changes dramatically throughout the day and the season. Alia Zaal’s residency also allowed her to research the scientific and neurological aspect of eyesight in relation to art.

Ongoing, this residency will be completed in the summer of 2022 with the second exhibition, I Saw the Time Passing (II), in Maison Oscar-Claude Monet presenting the four seasons of the year.

The artist’s body of work will be a result of different processes that she undertook such as plein-air painting, painting from memory, photography, textiles, and craftsmanship, all inspired by Impressionism.

In order to further explore her subject, the artist also studied the light and colours of the UAE landscapes. She adopted the same process of creating artworks that was practiced in Vetheuil.

An artist talk, weekly guided tours and workshops will take place during the exhibition.