Hani Alqam was born in Amman in 1977. He holds a diploma from the Institute of Fine Arts in Amman (2001) and has attended painting and printmaking courses at Darat al-Funun’s Summer Academy (2001) and the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts (1999 & 2001). Alqam has held five solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group shows in Europe, the U.K., Ireland, the U.S.A., Pakistan and Jordan. His work focuses on society, and the frailty and complexities of the human psyche. His paintings of Amman highlight the chaos and charm of the city’s old cafés and neighborhoods Alqam lives and works in Amman. “As an expressionist painter, I use my brush to portray the society around me, the human and his movements, and the person’s memory. To me, ordinary faces play an important role in my thoughts; they provoke and instigate unknown things to me, and further they allow me to step into their mass where I try to see the world through their eyes in order to absorb and understand, better to satisfy my curious mind. My thick paint and strokes are a compilation of stacked thoughts and desires unraveled and presented in such intensity; to me this leads to the subject matter,it’s through reaching your high senses that a painting can be complete. I enjoy this thickness because it allows me to touch a physical piece of society, a society that I represent in the daring yet such fragile figures that to me intrigue the mind, while they come out so intricate and refined on canvas, they are also familiar and somewhat chaotic, allowing each one of us to associate with them on some level.”