Booth A7
Preview: 15 May 2025
The Third Line is delighted to participate in the inaugural edition of VIMA, the first international contemporary art fair in Cyprus with an eclectic cross-section of contemporary art practices from the MENASA region and its diasporas. Our presentation brings Anuar Khalifi, Bady Dalloul, Hassan Hajjaj, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Rana Begum, Sara Naim, and Slavs and Tatars—a multigenerational group of artists whose works explore identity, politics, and aesthetics with urgency and depth.
Anuar Khalifi, whose paintings use irony and surrealism to question representation, masculinity, and cultural perception, presents his new large-scale painting, Everlast (2025), at VIMA. In contrast to the scale of Khalifi’s painting are Bady Dalloul’s intricately composed match-box pieces, which delve into notions of history, empire, and fiction through a meticulous layering of images and speculative cartographies. Hassan Hajjaj brings his signature blend of vibrant portraiture, pop culture, and Moroccan street aesthetics, while Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, whose practice traverses film, photography, and sculpture to engage with memory and absence, present a selection of works from the Trilogies (2018-2021) series, which illustrates imagined narratives related to the archaeological site, Monasteraki in Athens, Greece.
Meanwhile, Rana Begum, whose luminous abstractions blur the boundaries between painting, architecture, continues her exploration of the relationship between form and light through a set of new pieces, No. 1432 (2025) and No. 1433 (2025). Sara Naim expands photography into sculptural forms, continuing her exploration of how perception is shaped by scale, materials, and the borders we construct. Rounding the selection, Slavs and Tatars presents a carpet-based work inspired by the Naqshbandi Sufi order that mines the complexities of faith and language, as well as This Not That (2024), which playfully engages with the relationship between text and image, drawing inspiration from Broodthaers’ Poèmes Industriels and Magritte’s Ceci n’est Pas.
Together, the diverse works reflect The Third Line’s ongoing commitment to showcasing contemporary artists whose practices engage critically with the world around them—whether through form, narrative, or cultural inquiry. At VIMA Art Fair, this presentation invites viewers to consider the intersections of place, identity, and imagination, as articulated across diverse media and artistic strategies.
