arabesque

In 2005 I was kicked out of my Berlin studio and had to move my painting practice into my home. The disruption made it impossible for me to work for a time; I went several months without creating anything. Then, one day while cleaning out my basement, I came upon a dusty box of souvenirs I’d brought back with me from Cairo nearly three decades earlier. 

When I moved to Egypt in 1993, I’d never lived outside of the country of my birth, East Germany. Moving from the quiet streets of Leipzig to the bustling squares of Cairo was a shock, but I soon came to love the city. Among other qualities of the culture there, I was attracted to its enthusiasm for geometric ornamentation and arabesque, which one sees throughout Cairo’s streets—in wrought-iron gates, doorways, dishware, and textiles. When I returned to Germany three years later, I brought back, among other mementoes, a silk red scarf I’d purchased in a market, where its shades of red and graceful patterns had caught my attention. 

Over a decade later, standing in my basement in Berlin, I again unfurled that scarf. As it had that day in Cairo, its design pulled at my eye. At last, I’d found a reason to paint again. 

Initially, I thought I’d paint a traditional still-life. When I’d experienced artistically fallow periods in the past, returning to still-life painting had given me the spark of excitement I’d needed. Now, too, the challenge of creating a still-life summoned my energy. In this case, though, the scarf was no passing fancy. I became fascinated by its ornamentation, and with each painting, the patterns became more expansive, filling the entire visual field. For several years, I painted alongside that scarf, creating increasingly abstract images from its design. Adding books, table edges, and sofa corners to the compositions helped me explore new spatial situations.

Why did the scarf excite me so? It is always hard for a painter to answer such questions. Perhaps I owe something of these paintings to my mother, a textile artist who’d woven pieces of a similar shade long ago. Surely, too, they have much to do with my nostalgia for those young, heady years in Cairo, when my eyes were so eager to discover new formal and material possibilities. 

Ulrike Dornis was born in Leipzig, Germany and studied painting with Arno Rink at the HGB Leipzig. She has lived in Chicago, Cairo, and Sudan, where she taught printing techniques at the University of Khartoum. She now lives and paints in Berlin. Her work has been exhibited in the Gallery for Contemporary Art in Leipzig, among many other venues, and can be found in the Saxony Art Collections in Dresden.