Interview with Dia Al Azzawi 4/11/17, 11:06 AM
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» Interview with Dia Al Azzawi 4/11/17, 11:06 AM (http://artbahrain.org/home) BREAKING ! Salon Suisse: ATARAXIA (http://artbahrain.org/home/?p=10356) Home (http://artbahrain.org/home)FRENCH PAVILION: Xavier Veilhan (http://artbahrain.org/home/?p=10380) ∠ Damien Hirst: TREASURES FROM THE WRECK OF THE UNBELIEVABLE (http://artbahrain.org/home/?p=10376) interview (http://artbahrain.org/home/?cat=14) Loris Gréaud: The Unplayed Notes Factory (http://artbahrain.org/home/?p=10371) Ahmed Morsi: A Dialogic Imagination (http://artbahrain.org/home/?p=10366) Diaspora Pavilion (http://artbahrain.org/home/?p=10361) Interview with Dia Al Azzawi # artBahrain (http://artbahrain.org/home/?author=1) $ September 29, 2016 % interview (http://artbahrain.org/home/?cat=14) http://artbahrain.org/home/?p=9113 Page 1 of 28 » Interview with Dia Al Azzawi 4/11/17, 11:06 AM An Excavation of the Hidden Protest By Valerie Didier Hess The title of this very much-anticipated retro- spective show of your entire oeuvre taking place both at Mathaf and Al Riwaq Gallery in Doha, ‘I‘I amam thethe cry,cry, whowho willwill givegive voicevoice toto me’ refers to the title of a poem by Fadhil Al- Azzawi. Why was this particular title cho- sen? I understand that this phrase was sup- posed to be the title of your last exhibition in Baghdad in 1975, but it was changed to ‘Human States’ (‘Halaat‘Halaat Insaniyya’Insaniyya’)? Fadhil was and is one of the modernist poets of my generation. He was both a novelist and jour- nalist at the same time, and politically, he was a leftist. What he wrote reflected what was hap- pening at that time. With regards to my exhibi- tion in 1975 and its title change, I served the Iraqi army for the third time in 1973–1974 as I was deployed to fight in Northern Iraq against the Kurdish peshmerga. Thereafter, I decided to do something that reflected my agony during this time of military service. When I came back to Baghdad, I started to produce some of the works that you will see at the exhibition that are entitled ‘The Cry no. 1’, ‘The Cry no. 2’ etc. Here the ‘cry’ refers to agony and to the human suf- fering, rather than specifically alluding to the fighting between the Iraqi army and the Kurds. In other words, the cry represents here the hu- man state in front of tragedy and by changing the title of the exhibition to Human States, it be- came a more global rather than localized tragedy. I presented around 30 or 35 gouaches at the 1975 exhibition, as well as a few oil paint- ings, amongst which 15 or 18 original gouaches from that show will be displayed at Mathaf. Fadhil Al-Azzawi’s poem reflects a ‘hidden protest’ of what is going on in Iraq and to some extent in the Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Palestine). This is why you will find two parts in the exhibi- tion: one that mainly focuses on Palestine start- ing with Tel Al-Zataar in the 1970s, followed by http://artbahrain.org/home/?p=9113 Page 2 of 28 » Interview with Dia Al Azzawi 4/11/17, 11:06 AM the Sabra and Shatila prints and painting and more recently I did a painting of five children playing football in Gaza who were killed during their game. There will also be a four-metre high sculpture of Handala, the figure created by Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al-Ali, entitled Good Morning Beirut, which will be the centerpiece of that section of the exhibition. At the same time, the second part is very important as it is about Iraq, in which you’ll find many works with titles relating to Bilad Al Sawwad. Looking now at the exhibition’s subtitle, ‘Dia‘Dia al-Azzawi: A Retrospective (from 1963 until tomorrow)’tomorrow)’, suggests that your artistic ca- reer started specifically in 1963, the same year of the collapse of the first Ba’ath gov- ernment in February, the year after you graduated from the Baghdad University with a degree in archaeology and the year preceding your studies at the Institute of Fine Arts of Baghdad. Are there other rea- sons for choosing 1963 as the start date? Tell us about the earliest painting that features in the exhibition, the Villagers of 1963? I did not choose the date of 1963, it was chosen by Saleem! In some ways, my career started in 1964 when I presented for the first time five paintings at the seventh exhibition organized by the Iraqi Artists’ Society. After that, I became a member of the Impressionist Group and I also participated in many annual exhibitions. Al- though I was not a member of the Communist party, the Ba’ath coup of February 1963 led me to have no trust whatsoever for the Iraqi politi- cal system and it pushed me more towards keeping a moral stand against injustice in gen- eral terms. This is also when I started working closely with the Palestinian intellectuals, and I was looking at what was going on in the camps and the different events around that. Actually, the 1963 Villagers painting reflects more the fruit of my studies rather than that of the 1963 political events. At that time, I studied http://artbahrain.org/home/?p=9113 Page 3 of 28 » Interview with Dia Al Azzawi 4/11/17, 11:06 AM archaeology in the mornings and art in the evenings. Hence in the mornings I got the influ- ence of the ancient Iraqi civilization and in the evenings that of Modern Iraqi Art and Western Art. It is the contrast and the fusion of both that led me to become closer in thinking and in style to Jewad Selim. Selim sought to combine Iraqi civilization and Islamic art with a modern ap- proach, hinting here and there to Picasso and to other Western artists. This painting is very close in style to Jewad Selim’s although it was painted at a time when I was a member of the Impressionist Group of Baghdad that had been founded by Hafidh al-Droubi in 1953. Al-Droubi was very open-minded and he never stopped me being influenced by Jewad Selim and some- times also by Kadhim Haidar. With regards to Mahmoud Sabri, I was more influenced by his political stance rather than his artistic style. The year 1968 seems to have been critical in shaping your artistic practice and in encour- aging you to fuse politics into your artworks, further to meeting Muzaffar al-Nawab, a leading leftist figure of Baghdad’s intellectu- al and cultural scene in the 1960s, combined with the political tension and frustrations following the defeat of the Arab powers by Israel in 1967. Would you agree with this statement? When I went to college, Droubi had a studio that was opened to anyone to do whatever they wanted: theatre, music, arts. During my first year at college, he was very helpful to me and, by the second year, I had enrolled at the Insti- tute of Fine Arts. This is actually when I was first exposed to Muzaffar Al-Nawab as he was also part of the Impressionist Group, although I did not meet him in that context. At that time, Al- Nawab was studying Arabic in the same college as me but I did not exhibit with the Impression- ist Group when he was part of that group. It was only later in 1968 that I met Muzaffar at a dinner hosted by Hafidh Al-Droubi. http://artbahrain.org/home/?p=9113 Page 4 of 28 » Interview with Dia Al Azzawi 4/11/17, 11:06 AM The 1950s brought a new promising at- mosphere in Iraq politically, culturally and even artistically but suddenly something happened and revenge was on the politicians’ minds, meaning that the 1960s was a vindictive time, instead of being a time to work together to make things better and to build a country. The sectarian mentality became more prominent and is even more pronounced today, where everyone tries to gain as much as he/she can for his sake and not for the country’s. That’s why I got closer and closer to Muzaffar’s views. He was a member of the Communist party but he encountered difficulties within the group, in- ducing him to quit the party. Yet his poems kept a strong relation with the suffering of the peo- ple, especially with that of the people of South- ern Iraq rather than Baghdad. He had an un- precedented knowledge of the Southern Iraqi dialect and managed to create a very avant- gardist writing style. Some of his poems were about love but politics was the bone of the structure of his poems. When I met him in 1968, there was also Yusuf al-Sayigh who was another prominent poet and who was also part of the Communist party at that time. I devel- oped a good relationship with both al-Nawab and al-Sayigh in the 1960s and, even after Muzaffar’s escape from jail and flight, first to Beirut then to Damascus, I maintained a strong link with him wherever possible. One of the highlights of your mini-retrospec- tive show at the booth of Dubai’s Meem Gallery during the Frieze Art Masters in Oc- tober 2014 was a painting, the title of which can be translated as ‘A‘A wolfwolf cries’cries’ oror ‘Crying‘Crying wolf’, painted in 1968. The title refers to a poem by Muzaffar al-Nawab, but what is its significance? If you look at my works executed in 1967, you will find that many titles refer to the notion of tragedy, such as ‘defeated warrior’, ‘bloody monument’, ‘suffering’, so this painting’s title is http://artbahrain.org/home/?p=9113 Page 5 of 28 » Interview with Dia Al Azzawi 4/11/17, 11:06 AM not only a direct reference to the poet.