Oona Hassim

About

Oona has worked with Woolff Gallery for over 16 years now, exhibiting in our first ever gallery show when our doors opened in Shoreditch during 2001. These fabulous new works represent a new stage in Oona’s life and her career as an artist. 

“The pieces exhibited in this show are, in a way, a legacy of my parents’ free spirits, sense of magic and thirst for adventure, which has inspired me from a young age.

During my mother’s illness and up to her death 4 years ago, I stopped travelling. But, afterwards, I thought that it would be a tting tribute to her to explore new parts of the world, and to go to places that I had always longed to go. I would also return to my birthplace in Zambia.

I found that by travelling through di erent cultures, landscapes, energies and light that my perspective (both artistically and emotionally) dramatically altered, although it has taken a while to absorb these changes.

At the end of my travels I was given the opportunity to spend some time in the haunting emptiness of the mountainscape in the Swiss Alps, which was a stark and surreal contrast to the vibrant cultures and communities that I had experienced in South East Asia and Africa.

Travelling through these di erent worlds slowly helped me to come to terms with my grief and despair and slowly with time to rekindle my passion and love for making work”. OONA HASSIM