Sherin Guirguis will be participating in tomorrow’s artist talk series, which features three different Rogue Wave artists every Thursday night throughout the exhibition run. As a preview to tomorrow’s event, Sherin was kind enough to answer a few questions about her work:

Do you reference source material in conceptualizing your work? If so, what? And can you provide any examples?

I almost always start with research to inform both the content and the formal iteration of the work. Usually, the content of the work is grounded in historical literary references that I find myself drawn to. Most recently, I have been reading the memoirs of Huda Sharaawi, an early Arab Feminist and the founder of the Egyptian Women’s Union. I’m using the locations of historical events from this research as sources for a new painting series. The sculptural work in Rouge Wave, Untitled (el sokareya) is based on (and titled after) the final novel in Naguib Mahfouz’s seminal Cairo Trilogy.  

How would you describe your process?

Once I have selected the literary references, be it novels, biographies, poems or the occasional song, I use aspects of the text to define the formal parameters of the work - compositions, patterns, materials, palettes and so on.

In your work on paper, we see a dichotomy reflected in the looseness of paint and the intricacy of paper cutting. How would you define the marriage of these two disparate techniques?

This is one of the many places in my work where contradictory elements collide. I’m interested in how one’s perception of “looseness” (in the painting) and organization (in the cut patterns) begin to shift. Repeating patterns start emerging in the paint splatters, and the geometry of the cut patterns begins to break down. In the same way, I find what may appear decorative and ornamental at first, can become politicized. 

What does the use of pattern represent in your work?

Most of the patterns I use in the work are derived from traditional Arabic Mashrabeyas, which are privacy screens used historically to shield women from public view. These ornamental patterns can be highly charged with cultural and historical meaning. I find this merging of concept, politics, history and form very engaging.

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Join us for the first Rogue Wave artist talk this Thursday, July 25th at 6:30pm, to hear Sherin Guirguis, Owen Kydd and Kim Schoenstadt speak about their work in the context of our current exhibition.

Rogue Wave 2013 will be on view at L.A. Louver through August 23rd.