About The Work
With a history in street fashion, Hajjaj dresses his subjects with expertly blended ensembles of modern streetwear and traditional, intricate Moroccan prints. They pose in temporary studios installed on city streets, with North African textiles and pedestrian materials as their loud, joyful backdrops. The artist’s sitters often strike playful poses bursting with energy: some sit on a repurposed plastic crate or straddle a motorcycle, others do karate kicks or balance in handstands. Hajjaj then builds custom frames for the resulting photograph, and fills them with a variety of consumer products labelled with Arabic text, from Coca-Cola cans, to tomato sauce, to tea tins. In this way, the artist mimics the repetitive motifs of traditional Islamic zellige, where each can permutates in a repetitive manner, mimicking the tiled designs of traditional Islamic architecture. Hajjaj thereby transforms these quotidian goods into elements of artistic tradition, creating an interplay of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, and offering a new mode of celebrating iconic cultural figures through portraiture.
Courtesy of Yossi Milo
About Hassan Hajjaj
Metallic Lambda on 3mm Dibond in a Walnut Frame with Halal Meat Tins
40.00 x 54.12 x 2.50 in
101.6 x 137.5 x 6.3 cm
This work is signed and dated on verso.
About The Work
With a history in street fashion, Hajjaj dresses his subjects with expertly blended ensembles of modern streetwear and traditional, intricate Moroccan prints. They pose in temporary studios installed on city streets, with North African textiles and pedestrian materials as their loud, joyful backdrops. The artist’s sitters often strike playful poses bursting with energy: some sit on a repurposed plastic crate or straddle a motorcycle, others do karate kicks or balance in handstands. Hajjaj then builds custom frames for the resulting photograph, and fills them with a variety of consumer products labelled with Arabic text, from Coca-Cola cans, to tomato sauce, to tea tins. In this way, the artist mimics the repetitive motifs of traditional Islamic zellige, where each can permutates in a repetitive manner, mimicking the tiled designs of traditional Islamic architecture. Hajjaj thereby transforms these quotidian goods into elements of artistic tradition, creating an interplay of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, and offering a new mode of celebrating iconic cultural figures through portraiture.
Courtesy of Yossi Milo
About Hassan Hajjaj
- Ships in 2 to 3 months from New York.
- This work is final sale and not eligible for return.
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