By Heba Elkayal
In one of the most novel collaborations of the year, the fashion illustrations of Hassan Hassan, a writer at eniGma magazine, have been translated into rugs for Egyptian design firm Zimmer.
Daily News Egypt caught up with the artist to see how this interesting project came to be.
What’s your beginning in all of this? What got you to start sketching?
It was always something that kind of just happened whenever I was bored. I would be sitting in class or in a meeting and instead of paying attention I would just doodle. I am the master of the doodle.
I took a few art classes at AUC [American University in Cairo], but professors’ reactions were always ‘You’re too stylized,’ and ‘You have to go back to basics,’ so I stopped taking classes — blame it on a rebellious streak and an inability to get over the phrase ‘those who can’t do, teach.’
I never planned to turn it into a career or even something I would be doing on the side. It was the encouragement, (or I should say nagging) of my colleagues at eniGma magazine as well as gallery owner Dina Sabet that really pushed me to show it off, and here we are.
How did you develop your technique and style?
I would love to say I spent years in Paris perfecting my style, and summer vacations flitting through Milan looking for inspiration, but it sort of happened naturally.
I would spend hours sitting on my balcony talking to a friend or having coffee and it kind of just happened. I also love poring through art books and always found myself veering towards pop art. I tend to elongate things and make eyes huge and instead of fixing it, I just went with it and perfected it.
Have you ever considered going into fashion illustration? Going to fashion school?
Yes, I’ve even applied to Central St. Martins and fashion illustration has always been something I’ve really been into. My ambition is going beyond the drawing and making products with great cuts and material. There is so much more to design than just the drawing and I wouldn’t want to draw for someone else — or I still haven’t found the right person to work with. I’m a big believer in collaboration, so we’ll see where the fashion takes us.
What inspired this collaboration?
It was actually completely out of the blue. Yasmine El Gharably, one of the four founding partners running Zimmer, is the cousin of a close friend and she came to my first exhibition back in April 2010 and had this idea. The credit really goes entirely to her for thinking that my stuff would look great.
We had a few meetings to iron out details, plan how it would work, what my limitations are and the rest was very smooth sailing. Zimmer is great because it’s all about the quality, so it was easy to trust them and know that they would do my work justice.
How many carpets did you design? How did you select the designs that would eventually become the carpets?
I started off with about eight different designs after we had looked through the various styles that could actually be translated into a rug. We ended up choosing the three that would work the best with both the technique Zimmer uses that would appeal to the market and ended up with three; a face, a reclined body and three pairs of shoes. They were actually some of my favorite designs, and the colors and space of the pictures worked incredibly with the textures.
After the success of this project, does it make you consider other things you would want to apply your sketches/designs to?
I think I would definitely love to do that in the interim of the art. The thing that made Zimmer so easy to work with was the mutual understanding that we wanted something great and I absolutely love collaboration.
As an artist it’s great to have someone’s opinion that you trust and I think that’s why I haven’t ventured into doing it on my own. But sometime in 2011, I should be releasing a line of notebooks and cigarette covers, I just have to find the time and energy to focus on things.
Carpets retail for around LE 6,000, and measure approximately 2.4×1.7 meters.
Hassan Hassan’s most recent series entitled “Monster” is currently showing at Studio 14.
Zimmer
23a Ismail Mohamed St.,
Zamalek, Cairo
(Also at Designopolis)
Studio 14
14 Montazah St.,
Zamalek, Cairo
