A Negative with Black Hair on White Canvas

Several of Kaabi-Linke’s past works have used her hair or prints derived from it - female hair carrying a host of associations and ascriptions such as time, age, desire, beauty and elegance - altogether summed up in a rather masculine idea of femininity. On the other hand, “Negative of Black Hair on White Ground”, a printed monotype with acrylic uses hair in an abstract painting showing nothing but white-washed imprints of hair neutralised by any kind of narrative while formally referencing the black square of Malevich that was breaking the need for representation.

— Asma Al Shabibi