Ibrahim Benoh

Place: Amman

Born: 1950

Biography:

Nassir Shoura, also known as Ibrahim Benoh, is an American multidisciplinary artist of Jordanian-Syrian-Libyan origin. He was born in Amman, Jordan in 1950. Shoura's lifelong efforts to break the confines of geographical, cultural, and social boundaries as he lived across four continents, seeking personal freedom and redefining identity, gave way to a wide range of works. He has worked in painting, sculpture, drawing, two and three-dimensional construction, traditional and digital printmaking, new media, poetry, critical writing, and scholarly research. Since his early artistic life, Shoura exhibited at galleries and museums. He had solo and group shows in the Middle East, North Africa, Italy, and the United States, including New York where he was recognized by Betty Parsons in 1980. Though he left the art market in 1988, Shoura continued focusing on experimental work that led to his breakthrough approach to painting and new media. Shoura's early exposure to the way of infinity, the Sufi practice of oneness that transcends artificial divisions — along with reading extensively on the various philosophical thoughts of the ancient and contemporary scientific approach to understanding oneself and our world — fueled his work over the years. Ideas within the realm of infinity seeped into his work, such as interconnectedness, transformation, regeneration, continuity, variations, boundlessness, expansiveness, motion, timelessness, weightlessness, and nothingness. He creates harmony between the visual and the poetic as his artworks develop simultaneously with his poems.