Samia Halaby's Pioneering Abstraction from Canvas to Code at Sfeir-Semler

Sfeir-Semler Gallery Hamburg presents 'Samia Halaby: Fragments of Time', an exhibition juxtaposing the artist's 1980s computer-generated kinetic paintings with recent canvases from the 2020s. Born in Jerusalem in 1936, Halaby fled Palestine in 1948 and arrived in the US in 1951. She earned a BA in Design from the University of Cincinnati (1959), followed by degrees from Michigan State University (1960) and Indiana University (1963). She was the first full-time female associate professor at Yale School of Art (1973–1982). In 1985, a residency in Hawaii shifted her practice toward shaped canvases and three-dimensional works. Self-taught in coding from 1983, she purchased an Amiga 1000 in 1986 and created 57 kinetic paintings (1986–1989) using code to animate shapes and colors. This evolved into the Kinetic Painting Program in the 1990s, where she used a PC keyboard as a live instrument for performances with the Kinetic Painting Group. The exhibition highlights the continuity of her abstract language, where seriality and repetition from digital works inform her painting. The gallery has represented Halaby since 2022 and placed her work in collections including Centre Pompidou, Lenbachhaus, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, and Art Jameel.