A Homage to Iraqi Artists
Iraqi Artists Remembered
Mike Derderian - The Star
November 2004

An artist's death doesn't necessarily mean a parting from the world of art for having left behind a multitude of works ensures that a physical presence overshadows the tragic note of his death. Those familiar with these works and those whom have learnt from him the meaning of the word art might conspire a joint art exhibition in respect of his memory.

Iraqi and Jordanian artists joined hands and works to pay homage to Shaker Hassan, Ismail Fattah and Nuha Al Radi, three Iraqi artists who passed away this year, in an exhibition that joins the works of the late three artists with those of their colleagues at Darat al Funun.

Rafa Al Nasiri, Mohamad Al Obaidi, Salem al Dabbagh, Samer Osama, Karim Rasan, Ibrahim Rashid, Ali Taleb, Nadeem Kufi, Himmat Mohamad Ali, Maha Mustafa and Haleem Mahdi are the Iraqi Artists participating in the joint exhibition. As for the Jordanian contributing artist, they are Samer Taba, Hazem Al Zoubi, Khaled Khreis, Suha Shoman, Mahmoud Taha and Azizi Amora.

Entering Darat al Funun main building where the works are on display, one is left to roam freely among the ceramics of Taha and Zoubi, where Fattah's human figures are adjacent to Hassan's wood and paper colour sprayed sheets while Taba's colour renditions and negatives of Mustafa's lens lay silent in the next showroom.

Shaker Hassan's work on mixed media transmits a lost perspective and an unattainable vision of loss and dismay. Present in the torn fringes of his medium, which is incased in a transparent frame allowing a two-way insight, a deconstructional produce of what might have been a complete work with a coherent theme. Born in Samawa, Iraq in, 1925, Hassan studied art in Baghdad and Paris offering his experience in establishing the Baghdad Modern Art Group with Jawad Saleem. Hassan's complete devotion for art began in 1982 and lasted until the time of his death in 2004.

Showcased next to two of her ceramic works and a self-portrait etching, Nuha Al Radi's Baghdad Diaries stood on a pedestal among the bright hued works that came from Aysar Aqrawi's private collection.

Al Radi, was born in 1941, studied art at the Byan Shaw school of art in London in the early 1960s. Between 1971- 1975 she taught at the American University of Beirut. Al Radi's artistic life spun around a painter, ceramist, sculptor, which led to her becoming an artistic figure known throughout the Arab world and Europe. She died earlier this year from Leukemia.

Using simple, cheerful and easy-going themes, Al Radi's work transmits a sense of nostalgia as on gazes at a child sitting next to two kittens before shifting his eyes to another one, where a child is sitting on the door steps of a ceramic house fixed with a mirror replacing its door produced in the form of a tableaux.

Ismail Fattah's bronze sculptures on the other hand places the viewer amidst a savage deformed world carved within the body frame of his silent and cold creature-like humans. The coveted dreams of man whether subliminal or conscious are carved on a wide bronze plate fixed next to a man sitting benumbed on a chair. Fattah brilliantly transfixed both man and his dreams in a single entity alluding to man's day-to-day existence with his fantasies.

Fattah, who studied art at the academy for fine arts, was born in 1934. He held numerous solo art exhibitions since 1962. In addition to his bronze sculptures, Fattah's works on display comprise of bright paintings that reflect a more soothing effect regarding colours and a discomforting sense regarding the themes present in the visages of his personas.

The works of the seventeen artists, whom decided to pay homage to the three Iraqi artists, were versatile in the use of matter, themes and colours and provide the viewer with an abundance of styles reflecting each artist's way of paying tribute to the three artists. One of the interesting works on display is by Maha Mustasfa representing a three-sheet film negative. Placing the three plates of plastic sheets on top of each other, the first a transparent sheet filled with little light bulbs, the second a white negative of a house and a fence, and the third a more detailed black negative with a cow standing in the middle of a pasture. Maha's technique would compel the viewer to envision the three images into a one solid vista that comes in colour.

Darat al Funun's salutation of the three Iraqi artists is filled with artistic works of Iraqi and Jordanian intermingling with original works by Fattah, Al Said and Al Radi placing the visitor in a search and hunt trip for originality.

to the exhibition