Ali Omar Ermes

Ali Omar Ermes (Arabic:علي عمر الرميص, born 1945) is a Libyan artist and author. His paintings make use of Arabic calligraphy, often superimposed on a rich-textured ground, and may incorporate fragments of Arabic or other poetry or prose.[1] He has lived in the United Kingdom since 1981, and is the chairman of the Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in Kensington in west London; he is also active in other intellectual and cultural institutions in that city.[1]

Ali Omar Ermes
علي عمر الرميص
Born1945[1]
Tripoli, Libya
NationalityLibyan[1]
Websitealiomarermes.co.uk

Biography

Ermes was born in Tripoli in Libya in 1945. He studied at the University of Plymouth School of Architecture and Design in Plymouth in south-west England, and after his graduation in 1970 returned to Libya.[1] There he wrote extensively and headed the visual arts section of All Arts magazine. In 1974 he was engaged as a "visual arts consultant" for the World of Islam Festival held in London in 1976, and visited many Islamic countries to identify possible participants in the festival.[2]:45 From 1981 he lived in the United Kingdom.[1] Ermes has participated in various Muslim community projects, written about many important issues and has exhibited in some sixty to seventy exhibitions around the world.[3]

Ali Omar Ermes is a writer and a speaker who has published numerous articles in English and Arabic newspapers and magazines, among them Q News and Al Quds Al Arabi, although today he mainly prepares papers for presentation at conferences. Ermes has spoken at national and international conferences on a variety of social and cultural issues. A selection of his papers includes: ‘Art and Islam’ (‘Mutualities: Britain and Islam’ conference, Royal Commonwealth Society, London, April 1999), ‘Contemporary Islamic arts: a positive contribution to London’ (‘The Middle East in London’ conference, SOAS, June 2001); ‘A glimpse of Islamic heritage’ (‘Islam UK’, the BBC’s Islam Season, SOAS, September 2001), ‘The invisibility of the Arab community’ (London Civic Forum, March 2002); ‘The importance of faith-based education for the Muslim community’ (‘Faith in the UK and Development Education’ seminar organised by the Development Education Association, London, March 2003), ‘The Arabic language as a national cultural issue’ (‘Better Arabic Calligraphy’ conference, Calligraphy Centre, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt, July 2004); ‘The Arab media in Britain’ (‘Domination, Expression and Liberation in the Middle East’ conference, London Middle East Institute, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, July 2004); ‘Culture beyond stereotype: an artist’s experience’ (Islam and Arts’ conference, Oldham, November 2004); ‘Multi-Cultural Europe – The Muslim perspective’, VIII conference, ‘European culture’, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, October 2005); ‘Plural identity and European citizenship’ (European Parliament, Brussels, November 2007).

Exhibitions

Ermes has shown work at the State Hermitage, St Petersburg, Russia (November 2007); the Fowler Museum of the University of California, Los Angeles, USA (October 2007/8); the National Museum of African Art of the Smithsonian Institution, USA (May 2007); Word into Art at the British Museum in London, and later Dubai (2006 and 2008); East-West: Objects Between Culture at Tate Britain (September 2006/7) and Dubai International Financial Centre, Dubai (March 2008).

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References
  1. Sheila S. Blair, Jonathan M. Bloom (2009). Ermes, Ali Omar. Grove Art Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T2082155. (subscription required).
  2. Anneka Lenssen (2008). "Muslims to Take Over Institute for Contemporary Art": The 1976 World of Islam Festival. Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 42 (1/2): 40–47. (subscription required).
  3. ‘A lifetime of painting’, Venetia Porter, Q News No: 302 & 303, London, 1 March 1999

Further reading
  • M. Richardson (1988). The Alphabet of Ali Omar Ermes. Arts and the Islamic World 4 (4): 33–36
  • V. Porter (2006). Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East (exhibition catalogue). London: British Museum, no. 18.
  • Christine Mullen Kreamer, Mary Nooter Roberts, Elizabeth Harney, Allyson Purpura (2007). Inscribing Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art. African Arts 40 (3): 78–91. (subscription required).
  • Reem Abdelhadi, Luma Hameed, Fatima Khaled, Jim Anderson (2019). Creative interactions with art works: an engaging approach to Arabic language-and-culture learning. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching. doi:10.1080/17501229.2019.1579219. ISSN 1750-1229.

Articles in Arabic

Articles by Ali Omar Ermes in Arabic
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