Moussem Nomadic Arts Centre invited Hatem El Imam for a residency at the Frans Masereel Centre in Kasterlee, a workspace that is open to graphic designers, artists and critics wishing to create work in media such as intaglio, letterpress or silkscreen printing and lithography. In this graphic laboratory, artists are challenged into exploring and/ or reformulating the possibilities of graphic applications.

Last January saw Hatem El Imam experimenting with etching and drypoint techniques at the FMC. The result is a series of large-scale prints with which he calls into question the conventions of scale and framing. Through the concatenation of a large number of prints, he creates an infinite landscape, starting from a central work that develops in all directions. His work exists on the intersection between realism and abstract expressionism and is born from imagination and improvisation. Hatem El Imam examines the relationship between viewer and landscape, and existing notions of familiarity and alienation. His landscapes can be read as “sublimated self-portraits”.

During Moussem Cities: Beirut, the prints Hatem El Imam created during his residency are exhibited in the Bozar exhibition space in the Galerie Ravenstein.