Soul smiles through art, bringing rich smiles to sad hearts
DUBAI: The Workshop and Fann A Porter have announced their third solo exhibition with acclaimed Syrian artist Majd Kurdieh (Nov. 25 – Jan. 16). Spanning a period of the past two years, a large body of work on paper and canvas titled Surrender To Love characterised by a subjective perspective, is being presented. Radical distortion has been carried out in the paintings for emotional effect, to evoke moods and ideas.
This time, Kurdieh’s characters and colour palette are liberated from restrictions. Outlines have been removed (“art without borders”) from his wild and creative characters. The elephant, the donkey and the smiling sun are no longer depicted by surrounding black lines. It is a move that removes them from their former ‘cages’ and marks a further step in his evolution. The pictures create a sense of frolicsomeness.
His use of poetry is also heightened in this newest collection. Kurdieh’s paintings, both on canvas and paper, are usually given their wonderful, poetic depth and narrative by the accompanying text he writes.
In this exhibition, his poems have evolved to more concise statements such as “You are the insight”; “You are the memory” or “You pour light into my heart”.
His primary characters, Fasoon and Fasooneh, alongside their animal cousins, are also elevated into a journey of spiritual consciousness. It is almost as if with their liberation, they are reaching profound levels of awakening and becoming infused with love – to which they surrender and ask us to surrender too.
The artist explains this through his use of white space: “In many of my works on canvas, I left the white background empty to tell my viewer that it is not important where you are or in what time zone you are in. What is important for me actually is you, in the Sufi sense where we find clarity in nothingness”.
In a particularly striking Untitled work, a large pachyderm is painted in a deep-sea green and his trunk swirls towards his turbulent heart, from which a white flag emerges. Fasooneh, the little girl character, is firing a flower-tipped arrow into the creature’s heart.
The viewer is left wondering if the act is brutal or peaceful; but when we read the accompanying poem, we realise that it is love that prevails: “Surrender to Love,” the elephant says.
“Many of these pieces actually have a spiritual dimension because surrender is also about submitting to a higher power and embracing the strongest human emotion: love. Surrender, and all the rest of the miracles will be possible, before you are defeated by the monster.”
Ghada Kunash, founder of Fann A Porter said: “This exhibition shows progression in Majd’s work that we are proud to witness. It has been our pleasure to support Majd and watch as he pushes himself beyond his own boundaries. We very much enjoy having all his characters to come and tell their stories upon our walls.
“I like his honesty”, she added. “His work is pure and direct, like children’s scrawls. There is less ornamentation and more precision in what he wants to say”.
Kurdieh’s practice incorporates painting, drawing and literature, using recurring figures that tell a story, usually carrying a strong moral and positive message that he projects into the world.
He paints recurring, whimsical characters that seem to narrate a story. Over the past four years, he has created a ‘cast of characters’, the two main ones being the Fasaeen (Arabic for ‘tiny ones’).
The Fasaeen, one boy (Fasoon) and one girl (Fasooneh), always smiling despite the fact their world is filled with hardships, are usually accompanied by other characters.
Using a strong literary element in his works, Kurdieh joins the Fasaeen with a group of animals he paints. The characters come together to make what the artist calls ‘The Very Scary Butterfly Gang’.
They carry out small, optimistic tasks like removing thorns from the land and replacing them with flowers, or talking to the sun and the moon, where the sun itself rises and sets at its own pace, projecting a sense of freedom.
Using the paradox of a butterfly (he says it is very scary!), he touches upon harsh topics with immense gentleness. He explains that “when the fragility of a butterfly scares you, you become indifferent to the roars of a monster, you will busy yourself defending the rights of people to maintain their humanity”.
Residing at the essence of all his work is a strong sense of protection, for both humans and animals, and the need to shed light on basic human rights and needs.
At first glance, the works seem cartoonlike and simple: however, upon further investigation, the viewer is drawn into a complex world the artist has been able to simplify, with a childlike innocence.
Strongly poetic and very sensitive, Kurdieh channels his emotions into creating deeply humane art. The ingenuity of his paintings and drawings relays his candor and sincerely draws attention to issues he feels deserve to be represented truthfully.
Ameneh Baghestani, artist, medical student and guest at the opening event, said Kurdieh’s pictures are “simple; yet if you are sophisticated, you can understand their meaning. Then you get lost in them”.
Dima Murad, student and guest, said the combination of art and Arabic, results in stand out compositions. The poetry from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish are particularly effective, she said.
Edwin Ebinger, sociologist, said that the work is the “next level in the genetic process, from comic to graphic novel. It intersects with fine art, meaning, it takes the fundamental structure of telling a narrative and does it in fine art fashion”.
He said that multiple panels have been compressed into a single one. One of them is linking individuality with the universal. “It is a symbolic presentation of a narrative in twodimensional forms”, he said.