Hammzat Tahabsim

Hammzat Tahabsim (b. 1997, Amman, Jordan), an artist of Circassian and Iraqi descent, lives and works in Amman and Boston. Working across painting and drawing, often in oil on textile supports such as heavy wool, he approaches painting as a site of metaphysical breach where systemic structures and spiritual logic collide, collapse, and reconfigure. His surfaces operate as permeable thresholds: figures emerge as spectral anatomies or recede into architectural veils, suspended in conditions of doubt, exile, and fragmentation. Color functions as substance rather than symbol, bruising, staining, or sedimenting across the weave, while drawing acts as a form of excavation tracing ruptured lineages and cultural fault lines. Trained in architecture and visual communication, he recurrently depicts spiritual figures, prayer architecture, and landscapes in slow transformation. His exhibition Spectral Arrangement at Make Room, Los Angeles (2025) presented paintings and drawings organized around the force of the unknown, picturing bodies at the edge of life and death.

Tahabsim is an MFA candidate in Painting and Printmaking at Boston University (expected 2026), completed a Post-Baccalaureate in Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2023), and holds a BA in Design and Visual Communication with an architecture focus from the German Jordanian University, Amman, with summer and visiting programs at the Bauhaus, Weimar, and the Architectural Association, London. Solo exhibitions include Spectral Arrangement, Make Room, Los Angeles (2025); In Her Orbit, MMAG Foundation, Amman (2024); Arboreal Fields, Basement 23, Amman (2024); and Holy Cow, Basement 23, Amman (2023). Group exhibitions include Garden Variety, Ishibashi Gallery, Boston (2025); It Never Entered My Mind, Sean Kelly, Los Angeles (2023); Amman-Beirut, MMAG Foundation, Amman (2021); and Legacy Trilogy, ArteEast, New York (2020). He has held residencies at the MMAG Foundation, Amman (2021), Basement 23, Amman (2024), and Lagos, Mexico City (2024). His work is held in collections including the MMAG Foundation, the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, BMW Group, and Abdali Hospital, Amman.