03/06/2026
Róza El-Hassan:
The non-violent revolution is feasible
’Kind’ is term of praise that El-Hassan uses generously, but not gratuitously. Whenever she uses it I stop (at last mentally) to consider the true meaning of kindness and the possibility it represents. Can it be revolutionary? In the modern sense of ’thoroughly transformative’ but minus the revolutionary violence? This, and tenderness and their goal-oriented application, is, as far as I’m concerned, what El-Hassan’s newest larger-scale sculptural assemblages are about. The polychrome wooden sculptures For Non-Violence (2025) and Healing (For Non-Violence 2) (2026), with their partially covering coats of blood-red oil paint, are also visual methaphors of motherhood, of the acts of holding and nursing that literally embody the ’radical care’ of fashionable curitorial parlance.
1: Hommage, 2016, Wood and oil paint, 100 x 46cm; coloured plastic stripes
2: Healing (For Non-Violence 2), 2026, woood and oil paint, 168 x 56 x 70cm
3: For Non-Violence, 2025, wood and tempera, 165 x 32 x 32cm
Photos: Jussi Tiainen
elhassan
