Curator Morad Montazami leads a tour of the Mosaic Room’s exhibition ARABÉCÉDAIRE by Egyptian modernist painter Hamed Abdalla (1917-1985). Join in the fascinating walk through this ambitious exhibition and discover Abdalla’s extensive archive and library which helped shape his painting practice. Unearth the artist and the researcher.

ARABÉCÉDAIRE, a play on the French word ‘abécédaire’ meaning a visual alphabet primer. Abdalla’s work centred on his development of the word-form, written words expressed in paint, blending abstraction and human forms. The exhibition focuses on six key words and uses Abdalla’s personal archives and library and to explore his visual language and political ideas.

Morad Montazami is an art historian and curator. His research interests are cosmopolitan modernisms and histories of the avant-garde between trans-Arab, Iranian and Mediterranean zones. He has published essays on Farid Belkahia, Bahman Mohassess, Behjat Sadr, Mohamed Melehi, Mehdi Moutashar, Latif Al Ani, among others. He curated the exhibitions Bagdad Mon Amour at Institut des cultures d’Islam, Paris, opening March 2018, Fugitive Volumes and Faouzi Laatiris: Catalogue déraisonné at the Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rabat (2016) and co-curated the exhibition Unedited History: Iran 1960-2014 at Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris and MAXXI, Rome (2014). He is the director of Zaman Books Publishing and its related journal Zamân. Montazami is currently working as a research curator at Tate Modern, London.

FREE, rsvp@mosaicrooms.org