Sara Tantawy’s latest paintings capture the gestures and movement of traditional dancers in order to explore an ancient practice that for centuries has allowed communities to narrate and process the challenges of life events. The paintings featured in the artist’s solo exhibition Survivors describe how Eastern dance (or belly dancing in layman’s terms) has evolved as a communal practice that is at once deeply personal and informed by collective memory, allowing performers and their audiences to work collectively through emotional responses such as grief, pain, exhaustion, resilience, and euphoria.
In an accompanying artist statement, Tantawy notes that this specific form of dance demonstrates a “cultural inheritance rooted in nature” while reflecting a state of deep connection to one’s body and soul. Drawn to the potential of dance to serve as a transcendental experience, she depicts performers who appear to have reached a spiritual state of mind while simulating growth cycles found in nature, like the ebb and flow of tides.
In a painting titled Earth Tune (2022), for example, an elegant female dancer sits near a shallow body of water, shown mid gesture as though imitating the rings of a puddle. The water surrounding the stone upon which she is perched reflects plant life, what seems to be the inspiration for her movement, positioning her as a medium for the earth’s own fluctuations.