Saeed Khalifa

Self-taught Emirati artist Saeed Khalifa creates digitally manipulated photographs that depict pastiches of natural and figural elements. Using the Surrealist idiom, his highly saturated images portray fantastical situations and illusory spaces in which the human body is overtaken by organic objects such as fabric, fire, flowers, butterflies, and snakes. The dreamlike images reference contemporary body politics and social codes related to body language and freedom of expression. In his most recent series, “Deliverance,” (2012-2014), Khalifa manipulates photographs of his own face in portraits that are burnt away, stretched, and layered in different compositions. The eerie effigies fuse themes of ego and identity with destructiveness and reinvention.