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Sara Shamma exhibits new work for Migrate Art Multicolour Charity Auction - London

Exhibition: 9 Cork Street, London, W1S 3LL
Preview: Tues 19 March / 20- 31 March

Auction: Phillips, 30 Berkeley Square, London, W1J 6EX
Sale: Thurs 11 April / On View: 4-11 April
15 January 2019
Sara Shamma exhibits a new work entitled ‘Alien: Two Heads’ as part of Multicolour, an exhibition and auction organised by the charity Migrate Art to support those affected by the global refugee crisis. The works will be on view in a dedicated exhibition in March 2019 at Cork Street Galleries prior to being sold as part of Phillips’ ‘New Now’ sale in early April and also online via partnerships with Artsy and MyArtBroker.com.

As part of the Multicolour project Sara Shamma was presented, together with some of the most significant names in contemporary art, with a number of coloured pencils that were found in the Calais Jungle following its evacuation in 2016, to be used to create new artworks for the project. Sara has used these pencils to educate her children, who live with her and her husband in South London, about the current refugee crisis and the plight of migrant children that have endured treacherous journeys across Europe. In December 2018 Shamma visited Damascus to celebrate Christmas with her Syrian family, taking the pencils with her, where those exact pencils were used by Shamma's children to draw some pictures in her Damascus studio. One of these pictures (a two headed alien) was transposed by Shamma onto her painting making it in a sense a true collaboration between herself and Syrian children, her own children.

The coloured pencils for Shamma highlight the different life experiences of her Syrian born children and those children that were forced to make a home in the refugee camps, whilst reminding her of the innate childhood interest in ‘colouring’. By engaging her children in this project, taking them on a journey of empathy and understanding aided by the physical metaphor of the coloured pencil, Shamma’s work will interpret the topics of migration and refugees from her own perspective as well as that of children.

Shamma conceived this approach in order to provide a unique human-interest angle into her work as the only Syrian artist, one of three originally migrants artists invited to take part in the Migrate Art Multicolour project.

Participating artists: Anish Kapoor / Annie Kevans / Annie Morris / Chantal Joffe / Conor Harrington / Conrad Shawcross / Edmund De Waal / Gary Hume / Idris Khan / Jeremy Deller / Jonathan Yeo / Keith Coventry / Kevin Francis Gray / Mark Wallinger / Maggi Hambling / Michael Craig-Martin / Nari Ward / Paola Pivi / Pejac / Rachel Whiteread / Raqib Shaw / Richard Deacon / Richard Woods / Robert Montgomery / Ron Arad / Sara Shamma / Sean Scully / Swoon / The Connor Brothers / Zhang Huan / Yahon Chang