Habib Hajallie: Black & Blue
This series is dedicated to my beautiful first child, Sadie and my late sister, my best friend Bee.
– Habib Hajallie
Larkin Durey is delighted to present Habib Hajallie’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.
Hajallie uses portraiture to celebrate pioneering Black cultural figures, cherished family members and his personal experience as a British man of Sierra Leonean and Lebanese heritage. Sourcing antique maps and sociological, philosophical texts that speak of erased histories and British culture, Hajallie adopts them as the foundation for his work, infusing the words with new meaning.
Black & Blue showcases a series of drawings shaped by the devastating stillbirth of Hajallie’s daughter, Sadie and the indescribable emotions that sit beneath language. The works function as a kind of visual diary, using drawing to articulate thoughts and emotions where words are inadequate and portraiture to depict an altered sense of self. Many of the pieces are surreal, imagined scenes offering a glimpse into an unspeakable reality as Hajallie and his wife Katie attempt to rebuild a sense of meaning after their profound loss. The deliberate shift from black to blue ballpoint in many of the drawings captures the fragility and vulnerability of each scene. As the series progressed and Hajallie sat with these painful, complex emotions, he was also confronted with unresolved feelings of grief from the loss of his sister in 2022.
Folktales of Prudence, the only black pen drawing in the exhibition, was made in a period between these two profound losses. Inspired by Titian’s Allegory of Prudence (c.1550-65), the work investigates what it means to live a truly good life, depicting three stages of metamorphosis as outlined in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883) and symbolising a personal intersection of pain, existential self-exploration and the beginning of some form of healing.
While this series is concerned with the internal landscape of loss and what it means to endure a profoundly altered reality, each artwork has acted as an invaluable step towards healing. As a man, specifically as a man of colour, it is especially important for Hajallie to show his vulnerability and to depict his experience of living with grief. By drawing directly onto antique texts that explore morality, purpose and transcendence, Hajallie’s personal pain enters into a wider conversation about finding meaning and the ways in which drawing can become a space of solace and catharsis.
Hajallie was born in London, UK in 1995 and lives and works in Kent, UK. Previous exhibitions include a solo show Penned into History at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester; Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize; Saatchi Gallery and Bloomberg New Contemporaries, South London Gallery. Hajallie was included in the Forbes' 30 Under 30 List 2023. His work has been acquired by Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK and Watts Gallery, Compton, UK.
