Hemat Muhammad Ali..a “time” in which others live

Speaking on the nature of philosophy, the French thinker Georges Canguilem (1904 – 1995) says what this means is that the best topics that philosophy can work on are those that may seem, at first glance, alien to their nature. A definition that may apply to artistic practice as manifested in the experience of the Iraqi-Kurdish artist Hemat Muhammad Ali.

This is because Muhammad Ali’s paintings, since his beginnings in the eighties, do not stop examining fields and materials that may not be, in the first place, materials plastic painting In its traditional sense; This includes, for example, his restoration of a Mesopotamian symbol such as Ishtar, or his transformation of the poems of his friend, the Japanese poet Kotaro Ganazumi into paintings, or his similar partnership with Adonis, and others, which give an image of the openness of his experience to what is different and outside it.

From yesterday, Sunday until the end of this month, the works of Hemet Muhammad Ali (Kirkuk, 1960) have been shown in Exhibition It is entitled “Time”, or “Time”, and is hosted by “Nabd Gallery” and “Karim Gallery” in Amman.

The exhibited works include paintings and selected works from six artistic series developed by the artist during the last years and decades: “Letters to Ishtar”, “Dialogue with Adonis”, “To Shakir Hassan Al Said”, “Diary of the Earth” and “Colors”. From Kirkuk and Andalusia”, and “Flowers from Heaven”.

These anthologies constitute an opportunity to learn about the artist’s journey in her continuous experimentation and the diversity of her interests, both subject and technique; Where we move from the art brochures in which he reshapes the image of Ishtar in which he draws and poetry to his huge paintings overflowing with roses, we can almost think that they have depth and roots under and behind the painting.

Then we return, after that, to his black and white miniatures, which are also attached to the texts, about Professor Shaker Hassan Al Said (1925 – 2004), and then to the illuminations and variations in hot colors on Adonis’ poems and his style in the sketches that he was known to put in place, all the way to paintings that restore the decorations of Andalusia and North Iraq, and others – this time circular – tend to abstraction, and others.

In each of these experiments, the Iraqi artist reveals the ability to speak and the flexibility to adapt his vision, which he can express alongside poetry or over a photograph, in oil, watercolor, or ink, on paper, cloth, or others. An openness that does not depend on the technique and the subject, but goes beyond it towards others, from friends of artists or from previous and neighboring civilizations, which makes the art of Hemat Muhammad Ali more like a continuous welcome to the other and hosting him in the artwork.