Paul Mellon Centre London x The Sunderland Collection
An academic partnership centred around art. 4 June 2026 - 15 January 2027
The Paul Mellon Centre in London and The Sunderland Collection are delighted to announce a new academic partnership on the themes of counter-colonialism and embodied mapping, centred around a presentation of work by Nubian artist Fathi Hassan.
The partnership is centred around a hang of works by Fathi Hassan, which together with related programming will unfold across the Centre’s premises in an exploration of history, cartography, memory, displacement, and colonialism.
Curated by Beth Greenacre of The Sunderland Collection Art Programme, the hang reflects a shared commitment of both The Sunderland Collection and the Paul Mellon Centre to bring together contemporary artistic practice and historical research.
The hang features works of photography, drawing, and mixed media with a core set of works from ‘Shifting Sands’, Fathi’s response to The Sunderland Collection from his participation in the Art Programme in 2024.
During his participation in The Sunderland Collection Art Programme, Hassan explored the layered stories of the cartographic objects, reflecting on themes of displacement and global interconnectedness. The resulting works are richly textured mixed-media compositions combining collage, print, pencil, and gouache, interweaving autobiographical elements with historical references.
Recurring motifs include animals from his childhood, crescent moons, and Nubian warriors, alongside symbols of migration such as the felucca boats associated with the flooding of Nubia in 1952.
Enjoy the beautiful online exhibition for Shifting Sands here.
Untitled (2023) Mixed media on paper, 38 x 42 cm ©Fathi Hassan, Courtesy The Sunderland Collection
Born in Cairo in 1957 to Egyptian and Nubian parents, Hassan rose to prominence in the 1980s and was among the first artists of African heritage included in the Venice Biennale (1988). Now based in Edinburgh, his multidisciplinary practice spans painting, drawing, photography, and installation, shaped by lived experience across Egypt, Italy, and the UK. Fathi is represented by Richard Saltoun Gallery. His works have been collected by major institutions world-wide including the Smithsonian and the British Museum.
Find out more about Fathi here.
Untitled (2023), Mixed media on paper, 56 x 65 cm
Installed throughout the Paul Mellon Centre in the reception and public hallways, the library, seminar room and anteroom, the works invite visitors to encounter the artworks within a working research environment, creating moments of reflection within spaces used for the Centre’s research and events programmes.
An accompanying public programme will expand on these themes, including:
- Embodied Mapping, a panel discussion bringing together perspectives from art, history, sociology, and anthropology, 25 June 2026
- A workshop with Dr Sana Murrani, Associate Professor in Spatial Practice at the University of Plymouth, with interests in how maps have built, destroyed, remembered and reimagined geographies, particularly among communities that have suffered displacement and conflict.
Registration details will be announced soon.
Sacred Moon (2023) Mixed media on paper, 21 x 29.5cm
This exciting collaboration is built around our shared commitment to using our collections and spaces as platforms for discovery and making new connections. We are delighted to display Fathi Hassan's work at the Centre and witness the ways in which it uses cartography to make bridges between the historic and contemporary and help us reflect on questions of mapping, nation, and identity.
- Sarah Victoria Turner, Director of the Paul Mellon Centre
About The Paul Mellon Centre
Based in London and part of Yale University, the Paul Mellon Centre is a research centre and educational charity. They are a place for conversation and community, for questioning and discovery.
The Centre supports the generation of ideas and promote the sharing of knowledge about British art to create better understandings of the past, present, and potential futures. It does this through grant-making, programming events and activities, publishing, assembling resources for research, and creating networks.
Paul Mellon, a renwoned art collector and philanthropist, founded the Centre in 1970. It is a partner to the Yale Center for British Art.
Find out more by visiting paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/
©Paul Mellon Centre
