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Having to travel the length
of Sweden to pick up and award, Ibrahim reached the North
Pole. The journey, by train, enabled him to witness the four
seasons within a few hours. "Like a time tunnel", enthuses
the artist. His paintings, "gardens in all seasons", are journeys
through time, each affected by its passage in a different
way, each thick brush of paint reaching "inside", making one
look for deeper meanings. The rich colours are mostly green,
ochre, black, burnt orange, gray and white. The paintings
are often grouped together, completing each other, creating
a continuum, suggesting smooth passage of the time that eventually
ravages but also regenerates. Conveying more symbols and putting
side-by-side more contrasts, a video installation that stars
the viewer on the tour of the exhibition invites one to mediation.
Water, in different manifestations, is the medium that conveys
meanings and symbols. Purified by coal, in one video, and
steaming in a pressure cooker, in another, the sight of water
makes one ask why it needs to be purified in the first place.
Why do we pollute everything we touch, even if at our own
expense? Why is there need to keep pressure on things, knowing
that eventually the force building inside will explode with,
perhaps, catastrophic consequences? More food for thought?
Well, Ibrahim is ready to give it to us. A breathing man,
back to the camera and filmed very closely, will almost make
you breathe with his rhythm. His back expands and contracts
with every inhale/exhale exercise and his breathing could
be heard, punctuated by a bird's trill. Is it clean or polluted
air that fills his lungs? One can only guess, but knowing
that pollution is constantly on the artists' mind, optimism
is not the first feeling. Some paintings are covered with
letters or figures. The text talks about the one dear subject,
nature, the figures of time spent on work, inexorably passing
like life and civilizations. Maha's introspective nature,
deeply philosophical and finding a multitude of symbols in
one simple line, produces installations/sculptures of an amazing
purity and simplicity, steeped in meaning. Her "red lines", startling shapes
twisting, spiraling or smoothly wavy, made up aluminum "glazed"
with a shiny coat of dark rich red, purple or black colour,
are incredible stylized symbols. Her interest in contrast
is more concrete: Fire, lava, heat versus ice. She seeks to
reconcile these and do it harmoniously. So if the red lines
could be those of flowing lava or raging fire, they can also
be the so many "red lines" governing our lives: A separation
wall, "the equator that separates the north from the south",
the lines which we cannot, should not or are not allowed to
trespass and go beyond. They could be the civilized ethic
codes of conduct, but also the cruel lines between poverty
and wealth, between men and women, between peace and war.
And, in having attributed one of her creations the name of
the Dead Sea (which, incidentally, Maha refuses to see as
a dead body of water but as a life-giving salt-producing source),
the red line is simply the fault line that passes through
it and under which magma bubbles ready to surface anytime
in a devastating quake. |
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