Karina El Azem

Since my initial stages as an artist, in the mid nineties, I focused on ornamental arts and their influence in the development of twentieth-century abstract art. Decorative art was born many centuries before representation art, and through rhythm, symmetry and patterns, moral, social and religious views were conveyed. Aesthetic functionalism resumed old debates around ornament as artifice, but for some time we have acknowledged these manifestations with their own justifications and references.
I am currently engaged on notions associated to fractal geometry proposed by Mandelbrot; they are the basis for the works I am developing.
Even though they are defined by responding to the “self-similarity” principle, that is, each part contains the seed to recreate the whole, differences from the original arise with each increasing level.
Since Antiquity we humans have linked the beauty and sacrality of some forms of Art and Architecture to Fractals; physicist Richard Taylor even found a connection to Jackson Pollock’s art.
Fractals introduce chaos, they contain noise and order.
When our minds recognize a pattern we focus on it as if it were a thing, we try to find patterns we consider beautiful, but in order to hold them in our minds ...

National Fine Art School, Buenos Aires Argentina, 1992

Entre sus exposiciones colectivas podemos destacar: Bienalsur 2021, Los Hilos del Ritual, Envío argentino a la 14º Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Curitiba, (Museo Oscar Niemeyer), Diagonal Sur 2, Una lectura de la Colección Tedesco por Philippe Cyroulnik (Centro Cultural Borges), Poder, Autoritarismo e Insubodinación, por Damián Cabrera, (Fundación Migliorisi, Asunción del Paraguay), Pinta New York 2013, Envío del Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires Emiliano Miliyo/Karina El Azem, Algunos Artistas/90-Hoy (Fundación Proa), ArteCareyes 2012 (México), El Espacio en Cuestión (Fundación OSDE), …de rasgos árabes (proyecto organizado y producido por la Red de Centros de Cooperación Cultural AECID, con la participación de los Centros Culturales de España en Buenos Aires, El Salvador, México, Santiago de Chile y San Pablo, Brasil), Expreso Bs. As.-Tokyo (Mirai Gallery y D. F., Tokio), Premio OSDE Mención Fotografía (Fundación OSDE), Orden y Correspondencia (Sala GasCo, Santiago de Chile), Contemporáneo 11 (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires), NoTango (Villa Elizabeth, Berlín, Alemania), Fotografía Argentina (Galería Ruta Correa, Friburgo), Marcas Oficiales (Centro Municipal de Exposiciones Subte, Montevideo, Uru...