Amel / Abstract Contemporary Artist

Bodies of Relation

Portraiture as encounter, energy, and the shifting architectures of presence.

Bodies of Relation turns the language of abstraction toward encounter. In this body of work, Amel Karboul approaches portraiture not as representation, but as a relational act - a way of registering presence across people, places, and shared symbols. The paintings do not fix an image of their subject. They hold what happens in proximity: shifts of energy, rhythm, pressure, and alignment.
Gesture replaces likeness. Line becomes a site of negotiation. Forms press, coil, hesitate, or open, carrying traces of encounter without resolving into narrative. Whether the work emerges from a person, a city, or a charged civic symbol, the focus remains the same: relation as a living field rather than a stable identity.
Situated alongside Body of Dissent and 2425: Fragments of Resilience, this series occupies a quieter register within the practice. Where other works contend with rupture, protest, and aftermath, Bodies of Relation attends to co-presence - to how meaning forms between bodies, sites, and histories through attention and response. The paintings neither assert nor explain. They remain open.
What emerges is not a collection of portraits, but a constellation of encounters - provisional, porous, and deliberately unresolved.

Julia