|
press
clips
|
|
||||
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
press
clips
summer academy
currently on
workshops
activities archive
March,
2004
Jordanian arts center highlights founder's newest exhibition
Suha Shoman's Of Time and Light offers glimpse into oneness
with cycle of life
Peter
Speetjens Special to The Daily Star
AMMAN:
Darat al-Funun is in many ways everything Amman is not. Located
on a quiet hill overlooking the crowded Jordanian capital,
the arts center is based in a restored villa complex perfectly
integrated with the remains of a 6th century Byzantine church
and surrounded by a green garden. As such, it gives a taste
of what the city of seven hills may have looked like before
its rapid urbanization in the late 20th century.
Founded in 1993, Darat al-Funun, with its galleries, workshops
and ateliers, is one of the leading Mideast arts centers.
The main gallery's year-round exhibition of contemporary Arab
artists offers a perfect introduction to "the state of the
art and minds" among artists from the region and abroad. What's
more, every month an individual show takes place in one of
the two adjacent buildings.
Currently on display is the institute's first-ever video installation,
Suha Shoman's Of Time and Light, combined with a retrospective
on this Jordanian artist of Palestinian descent, in which,
of course, her many paintings of Petra take center stage.
Though Shoman has exhibited worldwide, it's the first time
Darat al-Funun has shown her work, perhaps understandably
so, as she is its founding president. It was Shoman and her
late husband, Khaled, son of Arab Bank founding father Abdul
Hameed Shoman, who in 1993 purchased the historic building
to save it from destruction and turn into a home for the arts.
Any suggestion of a preferential relationship is misplaced
though, as Shoman deserves every inch of the gallery's attention.
Born in 1944 in Jerusalem, the granddaughter of Palestinian
politician Ahmed Hilmi Basha, Suha and her family fled to
Egypt in 1948, where she spent most of her childhood. It was
by no means obvious that she would become an artist. In fact,
in 1961 she moved to Beirut to study law at Universite Saint
Joseph. After obtaining her degree in 1966, she continued
her studies for three years in Paris, where she first started
to nourish her love for the arts.
In 1973, she married Khaled Shoman and moved to Amman. Of
crucial importance in her decision to leave law and pursue
a career in the arts was a 1976 meeting with Faherlnissa Zeid,
the critically acclaimed Jordanian princess turned painter
who had returned to Amman to set up an arts institute. Zeid
would become Shoman's mentor and friend until her death at
the age of 90 in 1991.
"She was the first who noted I was painting Petra before I
even knew it, before I had ever even been there," said Shoman.
In 1986 she first visited Jordan's marvelous rock-carved city
and has spent many months a year there ever since. "Every
one has his little refuge somewhere," Shoman said. "For me
it's Petra where I find my space and my solitude."
While her works from the early 1980s, such as 1,001 Nights,
have an impressionist character, her Petra paintings show
an ever-higher grade of abstraction, illustrating her path
from painter to artist. The first paintings from the ancient
Nabatean capital are descriptive reproductions, followed by
merely vertical displays of color. In the mid-90s however,
it is as if she delved deeper into the rock to capture the
city's very soul, by depicting variations of one color. Later
on, she also incorporates her impressions of the inscriptions
found in the ancient city and actual Petra sand.
In other words, Shoman moved from making pictures to producing
images with an emotional, intellectual layer. For anyone who
has visited Petra, it is not hard to imagine how the city,
with its fabulous natural colors, has inspired the artist
for the past 20 years or so. In a 1993 interview with The
Jordan Times, Shoman defined Petra as "a merger between man
and nature in perfect harmony." And perhaps her paintings
are exactly that. Abstract yet harmonious; inspired by nature,
and long-lost worlds, yet not in a naiive, but conceptualized
way. "We're all but a product of time," Shoman said, "as we
all but continue what others have started and we're all part
of our natural environment." With the rock as the ultimate
symbol of eternity, Shoman's Petra paintings have a spiritual
quality, reminding us that one cannot be disconnected from
one's past and natural surroundings. In Of Time And Light,
she may have worked with a different medium, video, yet she
elaborates on the same theme of oneness with the cycle of
life.
In the first of three rooms, viewers are greeted by three
screens showing various moving images of water, the very essence
of life, from early morning to sunset, close up and from afar,
producing sparkling stars playing with the light. In the second
room, Shoman is seen on two sides climbing a hill. On one
side, it's a clear summer day, the other a misty winter day,
while we hear her breathing heavily. On the remaining walls
medical data which look like inscriptions appear and disappear
with every footstep. In the third room birds fly from dusk
to dawn, and finally, on a second screen, there is a massive
mountain in Petra, accompanied by the deafening sound of the
wind. Life comes and goes, and yet it never dies, seems to
be mood.
"With this exhibition," Shoman said, "I feel I've completed
a circle. After some 20 years of mainly painting Petra, this
is the first video installation I've done, yet I don't see
it as much different from my earlier works. The essence of
painting is about capturing light, and that's what I did in
this work, too. But these things you only realize after you
finish working." Leaving Darat al-Funun after seeing Shoman's
works, one cannot help seeing Amman through different eyes.
Petra, the ultimate example of man merging with nature, has
stood over 2,000 years and still amazes both artists and the
masses. Will the concrete jungle of Amman, short on water
and with hardly a tree kept alive, be able to stand as convincingly?
press
clips
summer academy
currently
on
workshops
activities
archive
