Fehed Al Hajri, a young lawyer and talented sculptor
His work conveys compelling message
This is the first in a series of articles on Fehed Faleh Al Hajri, a young lawyer and talented sculptor with many local and international awards to his credit.
FBy Lidia Qattan
– Editor ehed al Hajri is a young sculptor with a Bachelor’s degree in law. He is a striking personality reminiscent of the old type of Kuwaitis: the straight-forward, honest and hard working people I had the privilege of knowing when I came to Kuwait in 1960, since then the Kuwaiti society has changed, but many still remain faithful to the old stock, especially those whose parents nurtured them on the traditional social etiquette and prepared them for life to become an asset to their country and to humanity.
Fehed Al Hajri comes from a middle class Kuwait family, his father, Faleh was an officer in the Kuwaiti Navy, he was killed fighting for the liberation of his country during the Gulf war in February 1991. Fehed’s mother is a Lawyer by profession and a dedicated mother, of all her children: three boys and one girl Fehed is passionate about art.
From the moment he could hold a pencil in his hand Fehed began sketch on walls and on anything at hand anything that came to his mind. Father and mother used to encourage him providing him with color pencil and other thing he needed, as he grew up and he became seriously involved in painting, they sent him to private institutions in which he could learn various technique in painting and deepen his knowledge on different schools of art: Classicism, Neo-classicism, Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract art, each school gave him an insight on the transcendent purpose of art in its various forms.
Throughout his schooling Fehed’s favorite subject was art, but when he graduated and attended the Kuwait University he chose to major in Law because of the negativism affecting the Fine Arts and higher culture in general. Art is not merely an expression of beauty and feeling, it testifies to the necessity of communication in the human soul ; it is an evidence of the spirit striving after the light of self knowledge, hence it deserves learned consideration.
In the simplicity of the old days in Kuwait, when people were more producers than consumers, they were less materialistic; as the Kuwaiti evolved into a consumer society the whole structural interaction of human values changed. Even art which is mainly an intellectual pursuit has been conditioned to follow the market and the society it serves. In becoming materialistic the fine arts lost their originality and true purpose; indeed the same mentality has affected the whole culture!
Reflected
Culture reflects the soul of a people, its ideas, its feelings, its aspirations, its vitality, or lack of it. It is reflected in its literature, its poetry, its music and the arts in general, for they are the natural outgrowth of a people’s emotional life.
Higher culture in Kuwait is very young, it was introduced in the schools when for the first time they opened for boys and girls in 1937. Public interest in the Fine Arts and sports was spurred by the yearly Art and sports festival in
Lidia Qattan
which featured sport tournaments a classic play with an improvised Farsa during the intermezzo and there was an art and handicraft exhibition. Every school competed for the“Yearly Cup”. From such a beginning high culture took form and began to develop sponsored by the Government.
People form their concept of the world around them according their personal experience and cultural inculcation; there is a powerful relation between their belief and the society they form.
The spreading of knowledge opens people’s mind and can change even their most sacrosanct belief: their culture, their ethics even their political points of view, this in turn affects their behavior and the choice they make.
The tantrum accompanying conflicting values from the early seventies engendered by profound cultural
‘Horses Racing’ work by Fehed Faleh Al Hajri
when the fine arts were already on the decline. He started his artistic career as a painter, then he suddenly shifted his interest on to sculpture when in 2005 he was given a piece of wood to work on.
As he began chiseling the piece of wood, a peace and joy indescribably intense took possession of him, he was in such an emotional state that everything assumed a new meaning, a new dimension more real than the objective realities of life. It was a sort of cosmic consciousness, a spiritual uplift that made him conscious of an intense feeling of elevation and well being the like of which he never experienced before when working on canvas. His spirit flushed of everything that was trivial was flooded with a new vision, a new understanding of Art and his own purpose as an artist.
Creation
The creation he produced that day molded into a form that beckoned substance, realism and moral portent was the beginning of his passionate involvement with sculpture, the same feeling spurred him to deepen his knowledge in handling wood, metal and marble. But only working with wood gives him an intimate feeling of connection with nature.
His work “Horse Racing “is a clear statement of what the artist felt in the moment he began handling the wood. As an inspired musician reaches a point in which he becomes an instrument in the creation of his music, so did Fehed become an instrument of his own artistic form through which he expressed his message. The symbolic form he used imparts to the work an afflatus deep in its significant import, its eloquence and spontaneity is so compelling in the message it conveys that, once seen it is hard for anyone to forget this work.