Kinetic Painting with Samia Halaby, in collaboration with Amir ElSaffar

Join us at e-flux on Tuesday, September 10 at 7pm for a live performance by visual artist Samia Halaby, in collaboration with musician Amir ElSaffar. The performance will be followed by a Q&A with Halaby and the curator, Sanna Almajedi.

Halaby has long believed that to be an artist of her time, she had to explore the latest technology. In the early 1980s, this belief led her to explore computing. The computer marketed to artists at the time was the Commodore Amiga—the only computer that had a wide color palette, when Microsoft and Apple were still operating more or less in black and white. Already in her 50s, Halaby began learning how to program using the language Basic, and by 1987, she advanced to the computing language C. While Halaby is known for her abstract oil paintings, she sees programming as a way to visualize her paintings in motion. In her latest monograph Samia Halaby: Centers of Energy (2024), she writes that “[i]n kinetic abstraction, a shape could have shifting color and size; it could not in oil painting… in kinetic painting, a shape could make noise.” She goes on to say that “[e]ven though this work on the Amiga might look primitive in relation to paint on canvas or even in absolute terms, it is built on aesthetic ideas that expand the language of static abstraction made with pigments on canvas. It is the beginning of a visual discipline…”

On September 10 at e-flux, Halaby will be performing using a program that she coded in the early ’90s. This program generates abstract shapes that she manipulates in real-time using the keyboard, allowing her to perform alongside musician Amir ElSaffar who will be improvising electronic music on modular synthesizers. This event marks the duo’s first performance together, but not their first collaboration, as Halaby’s work graces the cover of ElSaffar’s 2015 album Crisis. 

Samia Halaby is a trailblazer in contemporary abstract art internationally. In her distictive painting style, Halaby draws inspiration from nature and historical movements such as early Islamic architecture and the Soviet avant-garde. Displaced from Palestine in 1948 with her family when she was eleven, Halaby was educated in the American Midwest at a time when abstract expressionism was popular but female abstract painters were marginalized. Halaby believes that new approaches to painting can transform our ways of seeing and thinking, not only within aesthetics, but also as a way to discover new perspectives for advances in teaching, technology, and society at large. This conviction has inspired her to pursue additional experiments in drawing, printmaking, computer-based kinetic art, and free-from-the-stretcher painting. Halaby’s work is collected by many museums such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art (New York and Abu Dhabi); Cleveland Museum of Art; Institut du Monde Arabe; and Birzeit University (Ramallah).

Amir ElSaffar is an Iraqi-American composer and musician. Described by the New York Times as “the celebrated trumpeter and composer who explores vital connections between jazz and Arabic music.” ElSaffar is an expert trumpeter with a jazz and classical background, who has created techniques to play microtones and ornaments idiomatic to Arabic music that are not typically heard on the trumpet. He is also one of the few living performers of the centuries-old Iraqi maqam tradition, which he sings and plays on the santur (Iraqi hammered dulcimer). After decades of mastering the traditions of Maqam, ElSaffar has in recent years been exploring modular synthesizers and incorporating them into his sound. This year, ElSaffar launched the Maqam Project, a new initiative with a mission to preserve and foster the development of Iraqi maqam and related practices. 

The program of sound performances at e-flux is curated by Sanna Almajedi.

For more information, please contact program@e-flux.com.

Accessibility
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the event space and this bathroom.