San Mei Gallery is pleased to present HINO 500 by British-Lebanese artist Alia Hamaoui. This will be the second exhibition in San Mei Gallery’s new public-facing window space, presenting a series of micro-exhibitions by emerging contemporary artists. Open 24 hours a day, this new programming strand facilitates responsive and exciting small-scale exhibitions in a hypervisible context.

Alia Hamaoui’s practice probes the relationships between cultural identity, objects and places, drawing on the artefacts, spaces, materials and textures that resonate with her dual heritage. Working across sculpture, print, image-making and moving image, Hamaoui’s work layers fragments of personal memory, found objects and digital imagery to construct enigmatic and affective elements of speculative mise-en-scènes.

At San Mei Gallery, Alia Hamaoui presents a single wall-based assemblage, HINO 500, made from perforated leather, UV print on sand, and a hand woven beaded insert. Exploring the way the architectural space of both car interiors and the Islamic paradise garden use physical containment to accentuate ideals of psychological journeying, HINO 500 stitches together visual references from both, such as the wooden beaded car seat covers often found in the SWANA region and other hot climates around the world. Hamaoui turns to the car seat as an intimate object defined by its proximity to the human body, a supportive form designed for both comfort and security in the risk-laden space of the car. Flattened against the wall, Hamaoui’s car seat pursues an uncertain relationship to death, at once protective but also indexing a driving force that pulls the human body forward through time and space. Also drawing on the geometric architectural designs of Islamic paradise gardens, HINO 500 registers a speculative drive towards undetermined futures.

Artist biography

Alia Hamaoui (she/her) is a British-Lebanese artist and organiser, a graduate of Camberwell College of Art and a member of Gobyfish Collective, a platform for dialogue, collaboration and exchange that operates at the intersection of art and food. Maintaining a broad, multidisciplinary practice, Hamaoui aims to advance our understanding of the interrelationship between cultural identity, the object and place, as viewed from within our increasingly digitised society and tech-infused existence. Addressing the importance placed on physical remnants of the past, as well as historically Western depictions of the SWANA region in mass media and popular culture, Hamaoui explores the ways in which image and memory can distort a sense of place or belonging. Layered and textured mise-en-scènes are imbued with references to ancient artefacts, heterotopic spaces or cultural contexts that resonate with her dual heritage, whilst also reflecting the artist’s own personal memories and the omnipresence of digital imagery.

Sales

The works in this exhibition are for sale as part of a new commercial programming strand by San Mei Gallery, providing income opportunities for emerging artists as well as fundraising for San Mei Gallery’s other non-commercial artistic and educational projects. For all sales enquiries please contact rufus@sanmeigallery.co.uk.

Private view

San Mei Gallery is pleased to host a joint private view on Thursday 6th July from 6-8pm, for Alia Hamaoui’s exhibition HINO 500 in our window space as well as Melanie Jackson’s exhibition Rouge Flambé in our main gallery. Drinks are kindly provided by Brixton Brewery.

Installation Views