Sadik Kwaish Alfraji edited by Nat Muller

www.ayyamgallery.com www.schiltpublishing.com

Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

Sadik Kwaish Alfraji is one of the most prominent artists working in the Iraqi diaspora today.

This beautiful publication is the first monograph offering a comprehensive look into the world of this extraordinary artist whose distinct visual language addresses the vulnerability of human existence. Covering a thirty-year career, from his early work in the war-torn Iraq of the 1980’s, to later seminal projects, artist books, paintings, drawings, videos and large-scale installations, this book provides an in-depth overview and contextualisation of Alfraji’s work.

Sadik Kwaish Alfraji Edited by Nat Muller Edited by Nat Muller

CONTENTS

Sadik Kwaish Alfraji’s Once upon a Time – The Artist as Storyteller

11

Nat Muller

Of Life and Shadows in Al-Thawra: the Art of Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

43

Shiva Balaghi

A Conversation with Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

79

Nat Muller

Artist Biography

201

Contributors’ Biographies

207

Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

Elegy of Malik Ibn Ar-Rayb Series, 2010, 3 pieces, each 200 x 125 cm.

Lambda print.

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Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

Elegy of Malik Ibn Ar-Rayb Series, 2010, 4 pieces, each 180 x 125 cm.

Lambda print.

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Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

From left to right: Vitruvian Man, 2006, 78 x 47 cm.

Ink, Chinese paper on textile.

Soldier, 2006, 221 x 46 cm.

Ink, gouache, rice paper on canvas.

A Tribute to Picasso, 2009, 210 x 60 cm. Ink, Chinese paper on canvas on wooden board.

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Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

Sadik Kwaish Alfraji’s Once upon a Time – The Artist as Storyteller Nat Muller

Many Arab folk – and fairytales open with kan ya ma kan,

Alfraji transcends the specificities of time and place to create

literally “there was and there wasn’t”, the Arabic equivalent of

art that addresses universal themes of loss and anxiety.

“once upon a time”. As in English, it inaugurates something Though his work often speaks of pain, sorrow and the burden that occurred in the past and that continues to feed into the of existence, it also offers glimmers of hope through its present and future, whether there is a foreseeable happy heartfelt humanity and empathy, often resulting in a deeply ending involved or not. With every utterance of kan ya ma

moving experience for the viewer.

kan/once upon a time, the uniqueness of the narrative is This publication offers the first overview of Alfraji’s thirtyestablished and confirmed, and yet it also offers a comforting

year career and establishes him as one of the most important

familiarity, an entry point into a different time and place. It Iraqi artists of his generation working in the diaspora. Rather is indeed a description of time and place that transports

than following a conventional chronology, the book loosely

us to the realm of the imaginary, where we are confronted follows the narratives of the textual contributions, the article with anxieties and fears, but also with possibilities and

by academic Shiva Balaghi on the artist’s background, and

desires. In folk- and fairytales we are led to identify with the

the in-depth interview with the artist that elaborates on his

protagonist and read the lessons of morality, or perhaps the influences, his use of materials and his themes. By engaging transgressions thereof, within the context of our own realities.

textually, a trope that continues throughout Alfraji’s

Imaginary worlds show us the grey zones of the societal fabric practice in the form of incorporating poetry, literature and of our own worlds and invite us to “move beyond the limits of

philosophy, this monograph is as much a visual journey as it

reality”, as Marina Warner forcefully writes in her history of

is a narrative one. As a master storyteller, Alfraji takes us back

the fairytale Once Upon a Time.1 Imaginary worlds rub against to the darkness of Iraq in the 1980s through his early drawings, the ideological framework of what is right or wrong, good or

woodcuts and etchings, as well as to the bleakness of

evil, and show the contradictory complexities of what drives

present-day Iraq in projects like Born April 9th (2007) and the

humans into the depths of darkness but also what gives them

shattered hopes of the 2011 Arab uprisings in the wider region

strength, will and resilience to survive. A story is, as Warner in the animation Sisyphus Goes on Demonstration (2012). His puts it, “an archive packed with history”.2

work is strongly influenced by the bold lines and the humanist

Much of Iraqi artist Sadik Kwaish Alfraji’s oeuvre could

concerns of the German expressionists, whose aesthetics

actually start with the phrase kan ya ma kan/once upon a time.

had been crystallized by the devastation of World War I. Yet

His practice is very much defined by his talent as a storyteller,

the richness of ancient Iraqi heritage also feeds into his art,

a chronicler and at times even a messenger. Rooted in his taking his inspiration from Sumerian and Mesopotamian experience as a young man of witnessing the horrors of the reliefs. Scholar of modern and contemporary Iraqi art Nada Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) and its dramatic aftermath, and Shabout points out in her study Modern Arab Art: Formation of later as a political refugee living in exile in the Netherlands, Arab Aesthetics that in the 1950s and 1960s after the Republic

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Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

The Other Faces of Gregor Samsa, 2006.

Artist book. 20 x 20 cm. 24 pages.

Indian ink on paper.

Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

The Other Faces of Gregor Samsa, 2006.

Artist book. 20 x 20 cm. 24 pages.

Indian ink on paper.

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Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

An Introduction to the Philosophy of Freedom I know that I can choose, but I cannot confirm that I am free, for my choices are always confined to conditions beyond my will.

Sadik Kwaish Alfraji Amersfoort, 2006

An Introduction to the Philosophy of Freedom, 2010. Installation view at solo show at Stadsgalerij, Amersfoort, 2010.

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Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

Hold on to Your Memory Series, 2006, 80 x 35 cm. Lambda print.

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Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

Hold on to Your Memory Series, 2006, 80 x 35 cm. Lambda print.

Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

The House That My Father Built (Once Upon a Time), 2010. Installation views at told | untold | retold group show at Mathaf – Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, 2010.

Photo credit: Orlando V. Thompson.

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Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

Sadik Kwaish Alfraji

In the Name of Freedom, 2007, 300 x 800 cm. Indian ink, rice paper on canvas.

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Sadik Kwaish Alfraji