Image: Amel Bashier, Women of the Cotton (cropped), 2026, © Amel Bashier, photo: Matthieu Samadet
Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main will open 'Amel Bashier. Essence of Life' at ZOLLAMTMMK on 12 September 2026, with an opening reception on 11 September. The exhibition runs through 10 January 2027 and is billed by the museum as Sudanese artist Amel Bashier’s first institutional solo exhibition. According to the museum, the presentation includes numerous new works made specifically for this show.
Bashier, born in 1981, works with images of women that the museum describes as powerful, radiant and fragile. The English-language announcement says her paintings celebrate women globally and give them the space and respect they merit. The artist’s own statement, published in the museum’s newsletter, frames women as “the essence of life” and as symbols of strength, resilience, memory and generosity.
The exhibition text links Bashier’s imagery to Nubian, Assyrian and Indian visual motifs. Her female subjects appear alone, in trios and in larger groups, at work or at home, and are shown as radiant, strong and visionary as well as lonely, tender and fragile. The museum says her paintings use vibrant contrasting colors, symmetry and a two-dimensional quality, along with large hands and feet, to give contemporary themes a historical weight.
The artist’s statement also places the work in relation to lived experience and wider social conditions. Bashier writes of losing her father early and witnessing the strength of her mother and sisters. She also cites her observations of wars and social struggles in Sudan, elsewhere in Africa and in other parts of the world, saying that women continue to carry themselves with dignity even when facing hardship, violence and injustice.
The museum’s accompanying text broadens that argument into a public statement about the importance of women in social, economic and political life. It says the significance of women is often underestimated and receives little recognition worldwide, if acknowledged at all, and argues that fair, equitable and respectful treatment would remove the underlying causes of inequality and injustice.
‘Essence of Life’ is presented at ZOLLAMTMMK, Domstraße 3, one of the museum’s three Frankfurt sites alongside MUSEUMMMK and TOWERMMK. The opening reception is on Friday, 11 September 2026 at 7 pm, and the exhibition itself is on view from 12 September 2026 to 10 January 2027.
