HUDA LUTFi

Huda Lutfi works like an urban archaeologist, digging up found objects and images as loaded fragments of history. She then re-packages them using bricolage as an interceptive strategy. Recognizable objects, images and icons are re-contextualized and made to tell a different story, playing on collective memory and shared iconography, Lutfi blurs historical timelines and cultural boundaries in her work. Multi-layered and playful, Lutfi is known to work with a wide range of media, painting, collage, installations, assemblages, and more recently with photomontage and video.

Her focus has been on the historical representations of the feminine body, and how it translates into the everyday. Working with the form of dolls in their various contexts, Lutfi explores the multiple roles of women within visual culture: as active producers of it and depicted symbols within it. Lutfi’s work introduces new technique and conceptual departures, Lutfi cleverly underpins socio-cultural forces defining masculine identity and exposes notions of restriction previously explored in her works on the feminine body.

Trained as a cultural historian and, with her second career as an artist, Lutfi emerged as one of Egypt’s contemporary imagemakers. She received her Doctorate in Islamic Culture and History from McGill University, Montreal, Canada (1983), and has been teaching at the American University in Cairo until 2010. Drawing upon the historical, cultural and local experiences of Egyptian society, Lutfi began exhibiting her art work in the mid 1990s. She has exhibited locally and internationally in both international galleries and museums: Alexandria, Cairo, Paris, Marseille, London, The Hague, Frankfurt, Thessaloniki, Virginia, Texas, Ohio, Dakar, Bamako, Tunisia, Bahrain and Dubai. Lutfi currently lives and works in Cairo.

Clockwise from top left:

Huda Lutfi

Anarchy , 2013

Painted photo collage, acrylic on wood, text 110 x 140 cm

Huda Lutfi

Castor Oil Detox , 2013

Wooden shelf, glass bottles, paper, castor oil in water 30 x 100 x 25 cm

Huda Lutfi

Pointing Fingers , 2012

Photo collage, acrylic on paper 70 x 110 cm

Huda Lutfi

Ironing Board , 2013

Photo collage, acrylic on wood, text 100 x 30 x 5 cm

Huda Lutfi

Isis , 2012

Mannequin, acrylic paint 75 x 40 x 25 cm