Hashim Cabrera is an artist who has worked for more than three decades, being employed in diverse areas and disciplines. Painter and writer, he has penetrated into the majority of skills and areas of visual arts, as a means of approaching different problematics of an enormous complexity and contemporaneousness. Painting, sculpture, photography, performances that in many cases, especially during the 90’s, compose an elaborate spectrum with a clear multidisciplinary vocation.
This artistic production has evolved alongside writings, in some cases essays, literary or poetical texts in others, which all serve as a compliment and in some cases even as a conceptual support of his visual production.
His first research projects during the 80’s, revolved around nature and culture. An essay, Nature and cultures, and several exhibitions of paintings, sculptures, photographies and installations, express an investigation about relations that exist between the environment and the cultural practices, between architecture, urbanism and landscape, between industrial society and ecology, etc.
For Cabrera, the 90’s meant the discovery of other cultural realities: Japan, the Middle East, the Maghreb and the Mediterranean area. Now the approached problematics concern cultural diversity (Mast without flag), historical memory (From Albaida to Al Hamrra), the connections among cultures (Islam and contemporary art), and the process of evolution and transformation of thought and ideas in the west (The disappearance of the angels: Ibn Rusd or the crisis of the creative imagination). During this time he develops pedagogic activities related to contemporary arts and their diffusion, in collaboration with the University of Cordoba (Research Department – TIEDPAAN).
During the mid 90’s, Hashim presents a conceptual performance called Melancholy without form: renaissance in conscience, which honours Rudolph Arnheim, by means of an installation in the Shimebaru Contemporary Museum of Art, in Kiusyu, Japan. He also presents several performances in public spaces, in Cordoba and Mallorca (Spain). During this time he was co-founder and director of Verde Islam, a magazine dedicated to contemporary islamic thought. He also worked as a consultant for issues regarding art, culture and spirituality, in www.webislam.com, a website that encourages intercultural exchanges and interreligious dialogue.
Later on in the 90’s he is an active member of the Ras el Hanut group, a project supported by the European Parliament. One of it aims was to achieve a cultural and artistic exchange between artists from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
With the new century, Hashim Cabrera concentrates on intercultural activity, by means of on-line exchange projects that bear in mind the possibilities offered by new technologies. (Art, Science and Spirituality: connections between emergent planetary cultures: UNESCO Digiarts. Leonardo Journal. MIT Press.) forums and debates in the Mediterranean area (http: // www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin).
He has delivered numerous conferences, courses and specialised seminars. In all of them, through his extensive knowledge of the arts he has united a clear ethical and philosophical commitment, proposing syntheses that, in many cases, have been used as starting points by other artists, works and research projects. With an open sense for artistic and intellectual production, he has taken part in many collective projects.
At present he is developing diverse research projects. Among them a project concerning color, and a workshop for the analysis of art and conscience. This workshop attempts to unify of art, thought and intellectual commitment, to which develops the material and formal dimensions of visual arts as well as its historical, spiritual and philosophical foundations.