Habibi Shine
BY Karimah Hassan
£11,573.00
Habibi Shine is a dream painted in colour. In the bottom right, a man rides a horse, evoking the story of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, ascending on Al-Buraq into the dream world of Jannah. The horse with wings becomes a bridge between earth and heaven, carrying the viewer into a realm of imagination, memory, and light.
The title itself holds the spirit of the work. Habibi - “my love” in Arabic - is both intimate and universal, a word that carries tenderness across cultures. Shine speaks to holding light even in the dark, insisting on radiance despite chaos. Together, they root the canvas in both devotion and defiance.
The birds, which always return in my paintings, appear here as guardians, symbols of hope and protection, guiding the journey through layers of deep reds, cobalt blues, bronzes, and golds. The frame itself becomes alive, dissolving into luminous colour, as if the architecture of the everyday has been transformed into a portal.
This painting is an invocation. It asks what happens when the sacred slips into the ordinary, when the streets of London brush against visions of heaven, when myth travels on the back of a horse through the city. Habibi Shine is about that crossing, that shimmer between worlds, and the belief that colour can carry us there.
2025
Acrylic on stretched cotton canvas
150 x 123 cm
Original
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Karimah Hassan
Karimah Hassan