 |
| Landscape, 2013, acrylic, 50X70 cm |
 |
| Landscape, 2013, acrylic, 50X70 cm |
 |
| Landscape, 2013, acrylic, 50X70 cm |
 |
| Landscape, 2013, acrylic, 50X70 cm |
 |
| Landscape, 2013, acrylic, 50X70 cm |
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Landscapes, 2013, acrylic, 50X70 cm
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Woman in village that will be destroyed, 1994, woodcut, 36x17, 5 cm
 |
| Woman in village that will be destroyed, 1994, woodcut, 36x17, 5 cm |
Political art beyond the picturesque
Harsh
censorship in the arts after 9/11 was confronted with a sweeping wave of
political expression everywhere in the US, from galleries and talk shows to
films and blogs, especially targeting George Bush. Almost immediately this
politicization spread to the whole art-world, notably the international
exhibitions and fairs, where the vocabulary and ideas associated with
“identity” and “multiculturalism” that had been developed in the ‘80s, were
further elaborated. At its best, this politicization after 2001 concerned
neither “voices yet unheard”, nor “particularities threatened with extinction”.
It challenged the generalized biopolitics of “antiterrorism” and “security”, a
condition of permanent emergency, where everyone is under surveillance,
potentially criminal, indeed guilty until proved innocent.
The political dimension of Serhad Bapir’s engravings cannot be measured against
the standards of “ethnic” and “world” art, nor are they comments against the
security state made from the comfortable distance of a mass-democratic couch.
They needn’t claim local authenticity or legitimization. Serhad’s motives are
clear, as the works bear his stamp of personal commitment from the start. His
image-making has always been political. A political refugee in Greece, he turned
his stress into strength, studying painting and then engraving next to
brilliant teachers like Manolis Yannadakis and his main mentor Xenis Sachinis.
Engraving suits him well, for its high aesthetic and conceptual contrasts, for
its reproducibility, its emphatic respect for the creative process itself, and
finally for its history in emblems and illustration. Engraving enables him to
serve his own lyrical idiom, while not hiding behind an irrelevant and
subjectivist neutrality. He seems to be making icons out of the concept of
one’s “homeland”, which for him is a bloodstained piece of a broader universe
ruled by pain, deprivation and absence. Works like “Kurdistan,
Chechnya, Tibet” (2003), or “Refugees
in the Mediterranean” (2001) and “Self-Determination” (2006) speak
of the remains of hope and sorrow in the paranoia of constant war, a low-level
conflict which covers all spheres of control across the planet.
Some works appear mercilessly specific: “Woman
in a Village that is About to be Destroyed” and “100
Years of Kurdish Journalism”provide arguments to a struggle that is ongoing
on the eastern front, yet is also being fought right next to us – Arivan
Abdullah Osman, an Iraqi Kurd, was badly beaten up by Greek coast guards and
has been in a coma for weeks now [Arivan passed away less than four months
later, on July 27th 2009]; Turks and Kurds are still caught up in the claws of
the 2004 Greco-Turkish bilateral refoulement agreement for returning
immigrants.
With the straightforwardness of a political poster, works such as“Accordance” (2005) and “The
Cry” (2005) choose to offer some allegorical background to the collective vision
of a fairer life.“Survival” , “Return” and “Then” , on the other hand, transform Serhad’s own
enduring nostalgia into memory, a memory that cherishes moments of beauty, and
shelters them from hopelessness and grief.
Lia Yoka
Art Historian
From the newspaper "Macedonia Sunday" May 24,
2009. For the report prints in Vafopoulio Cultural Center of the City of
Thessaloniki (Greece).
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
When memory shouts....
The contact of the engraver and painter Serhad with the engrave art was not the usual one, as it is for the western artists. The first time the creator dealt with this demanding art was not because of visual speculation and meditation about beauty, with luxurious handmade papers and porcelain oxidization-basins. The first time that Serhad engraved and printed was – as he himself confesses – because he had to. Wanted from the Turkish junta he had to forge an identity, engraving for this purpose on a piece of plastic used for floor-covering an embossed seal. He used this seal to stamp the photo having thus a forge identity. Using this “identity” he managed to go through the police round-up, he left his home-country Kurdistan and came to Greece as a political refugee.
What Serhad doesn’t confess – but can easily be realized by sensitive perceivers from his creations – is that the artist went on and is still engraving due to his needs. Not to survive but to save his identity, his memory, the consciousness of struggles, the dreams and the wishes of his people. To save all the elements that identifies and justifies the artist with his creations.
Serhad belongs to those people who from a very early age had to choose among an easy and humiliated life and the Odyssey of freedom. Having no doubts he choosed the second path knowing thus that he choose the hardness of being a refugee, the pain of the loneliness, the loss of the home country and the beloved persons and so many others which although they seem insignificant and worthless speaking of them, they are the balm of the human life. It is certain that when the artist began his Odyssey he had no idea that the day of the return would approve so far away, maybe because hope functions as an ark through which the human saves himself from the hard reality.
It has been twenty-five years since the day the artist began his journey. Twenty-five years of endless waiting, with the “nostimon imar”* torturing his soul, not seeing the home – chimney away in the horizon, watching the return day to his home country going further and further away and having the art as the only balsam making less the pain of waiting .
We consider indispensable this short biographical report that would be useless to other cases but we believe that the place where Serhad comes from is one of the essential keys for the interpretation and deciphering of his work. We believe that the art and furthermore the engraving art is not just what Serhad enjoys but also the place where he can express himself, his as a human – being searching and a refugee place as well. The artist feeds himself through what he creates keeping thus alive the dream of freedom, which in turn inspires him what to create next. That’s why he constantly goes back to the “river” of memories to draw pictures showing the reality and proving in such a way his identity.
This vital need turns every single creation into a significant monument that fights against forgetfulness, as a libation to collective memory, as a worth full alphabet to those who don’t know how to read but wish to be taught history, so that his entire artwork is not the recording of a personal story but turns to be a visual epopee narrating the existence of his people in time.
For this reason, and beyond any deviations in the field of the abstract art, Serhad’s art remains vivid with a special love of symbolism. His use of symbols, which are not borrowed but originate and express his own experience in life, are used with stability and insistence and at the same time with a sense of awareness protecting from exaggeration and saturation. Symbols always have a conscious presence in his art. Often they appear where you don’t expect to see them, usually after a second more careful look. Certainly it would not be an exaggeration to say that the language of his symbols envelopes like delicate silver all of his work, allowing the coherence and the creative dialogue between his works. Thus, although the artist chooses the symbols each time due to his expressing needs he always manages-exploiting their advantage to act one-way to transform them into a vehicle and a transmit of concrete messages without loosing the main care of the creator, that is the way an idea was born.
It should be emphasized that even the choice of engraving itself as a means of expression, a conscious action rather than a unconscious one, comes to serve exactly this purpose since the artist finds in engraving the perfect way to express his ideas. It is worth mentioning that for Serhad engraving is not just an extension of the rest of his artistic work, as it’s usually the case in the work of many artists, but the corner-stone of his creation even though the artist also paints. The engraver who, as it has already been emphasized, has consciously chosen to be away from the enigmatic and sibylline ways of modern art and has definitely denied “the lure” of multiple interpretation managing to turn his work into a messenger of symbols, that can be interpreted in a very specific and unique way, couldn’t find better means of expressing his ideas and intentions than by engraving. In his hands, even the way of printing turns from a “compulsory” commitment into a liberating action, since every copy produced multiplies the power of its manifesto. One symbolic motive repeated often in Serhad’s work is “fingerprints”. This motive appears on bushes and leaves, on or behind country and humans and in the deep dark sea water. Although his symbolism is eloquent, it must be clarified. The fingerprint has a double meaning and the way it is used reveals the fact that even for the artist himself it represents a field of dilemma. Some times he uses fingerprints in the background to support the synthesis and some other time he uses it in the foreground darkening with its threatening shadow the whole print. Other times, the fingerprint is so obvious and insistent that someone hardly sees the other elements of the synthesis.
The fingerprint, functions either as an insistent and concrete memorandum or as a stable and endless accusation against the tyranny of power. The element that in substance composes the authentic proof of the human uniqueness is used as an underground river fighting against anonymity. On the other hand its use as an under ground river reminds us how a man or peoples can be persecuted and be excluded because of their significant virtues. The tragedy of this dilemma seems to be the permanent torment of the artist. It is crucial to emphasize that in every case the fingerprint is presented interminable as visual motif, implying thus mapping that has been yet completed, being unable to distinguish its limits although we know they exist.
There are also motifs of which the skillful use from the artist turns them into universal symbols. For example the motif of the bird crane which is one of the most used symbols in Serhad’s work. To decipher the symbols we turned to the creator himself who initiated us into the symbolic explaining that in his home country people believe that the bird crane “brings” the spring. The engraver is charmed by the sensitive and kind crane’s shape that allowed him to investigate concepts that are connected in cohesion to the nature and the habits of the bird for example the concept of migration, of returning, of ephemeral, of hope as well as concepts that in cohesion are the antipode such as captivity, insistence, the struggle to survive, resistance. The crane’s motive is wed in various ways in synthesis. Some times a flight of cranes accompanies humans in their painful migration. Even if they follow the exact opposite course, they seem to crown protectively the peoples’ course wanting thus to memorize the variability of the human situations. They are omen reminding us that what happens today is not eternal. It is a promise that the circle-going of the seasons will inevitably bring the returning which the artist considers as deterministic. Some other times crane are intentionally presented in an unspecified place which is usually charged oppressively and from other symbols- illuminated spiral suns or impressive complex of stairs going up to the sky. They are presented as brilliant figures in a dark plane or as dark figures depicted in an expressionistic way in a brilliant sky blue. Some times they are high up in the sky and some other time they fly down near the earth rather than the sky. In the second case the thickness of the line and the large number of engraving imply an oppressive atmosphere which is emphasized even more from the adhesion to the plane level.
Of great interest are the syntheses in which the form of the crane is interwoven with the motive of a tree, another significant element of the personal myth and the idiomatic language of Serhad. When this happens, the tree-which in the symbolic language of the artist is connected with the idea “of the homeland” and the ancient “tree of panspermia” whose seeds are the beginning of all beings and of all peoples-is transformed into a terrifying goal which captures the cranes which are struggling in vain to escape. The skillfulness with which the artist handles the moving towards different directions figures tightens the dramatization of the synthesis and the culmination of feelings of agony sharpens. The viewer has the sense of listening to the flapping off birds and therefore the artist manages to speak in the most effective way for the people. We recognize that what is happening to the cranes-and which is not different from what is happening to humans- the injustice, the captivity, the pain, the barbaric suppression, the deprivation of freedom is not just an action against the human- law but also against the law of nature.
It is worth paying attention to the case of the work entitled “Survival” in which for another time cranes are appropriate to human-features. This work is a top-moment of the identification of the human-fate and the fate of all creatures, the fate of nature and the fate of the world. The birds are falling from mania against the roots of the tree claiming with passion for survival. Every element of the synthesis, the bright figures of cranes, the tree bowing during the attack of the birds, the net of the roots being eroded, speak for the defense of the right of being, so that the work gives meaning, the content of which is in first place. It is a certain fact that in Serhad’s artistic creation we will seldom find works going away from the conscious subjugation of the figure, of the material and of the technique in the content. Even the landscape in Serhad’s occasion is not just a simple representation of a part of the reality, not even an image of a beloved part of his homeland. The landscape reflects his spiritual situation, it reflects his existential agony in a fluent way and mainly it carries the strength of his testimony. The mythical Mount Ararat, the Lake Wan, the Walls of Amed, the Inn of Eleman, inspired and strong work, they remain extracts of a natural reality, yet they narrate stories taken from the moonlight of a myth. A myth springing right out of the artist’s heart, intertwining the mystery and the eternity of the pictorial narrating with hints and whispers of his personal symbolism.
The image of a market town for instance is something much more than a simple approach of an urban landscape-work. The urban landscape which at first sight reveals the poetic mood of the creator, steeped as it is in the patina of recollection and nostalgia, at second sight turns into a holy symbol and cryptic message. Behind the golden light of the sunrise and the disarming uniformity of a market town situated indolent in the sun, the careful viewer can distinguish the intense directing glance of the creator who uses superficially stereotyped elements, in order to reveal thought and anxiety than cannot be characterized as stereotyped. The essential “reading” transforms the bathed in light idyllic landscape into obsessive questions. We wonder what is hidden behind the hermetically closed windows and doors. What those voiceless masses are hiding, being so static and remote, so stripped of life. What is hidden behind the undisturbed calmness and the mystic silence?. Those are questions which cannot be easily answered. Maybe because the houses are waiting patiently for so long for their story-telling do not acquiesce in the revelation of their secret and imitating the humans who dwell in them, they prefer to protect themselves. The mystery of the sealed and impenetrable is illuminated somehow if we try to decipher the enigma, through the reshaped from the imaginary to the living experience of the artist but without having it illustrated. Probably, because the hermetically closed windows remain inaccessible and prohibitive for the creator himself. In the unity of the landscape there is engraving that shows that the artist seems to be charmed the immensity and the horizon and engraving in which the artist abandons the detailed description and adopts more abstract ways.
In the first case the background is shaped out in shadows and bright surfaces while in the second unshaped figures, colorful lines and vivid backgrounds colors join in the pictorial play effectively constructing the whole synthesis. Of course the idea which connects the total of Serhad’s pictorial creation is obvious in both engraving cases since symbolism is not missing-even if apparently it climbs down until the readable and the easy to understand flags. However we must emphasize that the work which is placed among the second occasion is distinguished mainly due to the sense of playing and the synthesis gives us a slight note of euphoria which the artist does not usually do. Spirals and concentric circles, lines, sensitive colors and intense interest for the searching of the materials and the output of their structure make Serhad’s work outstanding while the litotes of the means shows the politeness and the elegance of a .
One of the most basic elements in Serhad’s art is the human figure and that couldn’t have been otherwise. His anthropocentric work ends in a strong humanist’s declaration. His human figure shows in the best way his intention to speak to the human, who is revealed to be either single or as an organic element of a few or usually crowded and unbreakable tight group.
When the human figure is single, it is presented either as a dark face, tormented, wrapped and well-hidden behind a tight scarf encircled in synthesis leading it to choke. In both cases they are presented as exhausted or furious but never as subjugated or defeated. They are Dorian figures which remain silent but their silence is more buzzing than a stream of words. They usually occupy the whole synthesis and they are mainly women or children, weak persons hesitating to reveal their characteristics. Since the artist knows their needs, he offers them the shelter of being anonymous protectively and tenderly. However, sometimes when tenderness pre-dominates the contract of being anonymous is suspended. Then figures of rare politeness, nobility eroding the time-net, rise on to the surface. They are totally alive and charming. They exude the scent of the land and they look at us with the eyes of the human we have known for so many years, friendly and warm but at the same time they search and wonder about our intentions. Their politeness does not allow them to demand and thus respect and honor is offered to them generously to make them significant and valuable. In that case when the human figures are presented as groups what characterizes the synthesis is the same direction. The humans always step towards the same direction, which is from the left to the right. They step all over the synthesis and often part of the last figure is left behind giving thus the impression of coherence. The humans’ route sometime has a specific destination, some other time a ship or a stair going up to the sky, sometime the humans look as if they have lost their way, being abandoned in the middle of nowhere. The humans’ route is often accompanied by cranes, while in synthesis the fingertip has embodied elements whish are the basic expressive element of Serhad’s symbolism. In the case when the figures are organized into groups, you can distinguish their peculiar schema. The realistic reference flags, the figures turn into bizarre images, small rings of smoke longing to be dematerialized.
It is worth saying that in Serhad’s work the reading of the inner impulse is disciplined for the benefit of the epic style of an art which confesses its commitment, for example in that artwork “A woman in the village which is going to be destroyed”. The tragedy of the human who knows the future-events-not in a metaphysics way but in a way that the experience through so many years has taught him- is expressed in the dark shadow of the woman in the foreground. The woman is presented as a guard, a guard who although she is aware of the tragic evolution does not surrender. The title of this art-work which reminds us an oracle confirms the foreboding of the viewer. It resembles an inscription on a glorifying tomb. The way the synthesis is organized with the emphasis on the hierarchy of the female figure, not only as far as the size is concerned but also her position in the foreground, declares that behind the imminent defeat the triumph is shown. The triumph of human who still resists despite the consciousness of his defeat.
In the antipode of the previous choice art-work which should not be ignored since in their case the intention is unable to master the emotion. It is the case of art-work in which peoples’ routes end in ships- one of the most often-used symbols in Serhad’s art. In these art-pieces the artist is abandoned to his emotions. Every effort to govern despair-which the artist seems to consider a humiliating emotion, is abandoned and desperation is culminated. It is obvious that these art-works are born when the memory shouts. They remind us in the most shocking way the verse of the poet. “Try to change the thought of the refugee, the thought of a prisoner, the thought of a man who ended up, try to change it, you can’t” They confirm the thought that everyone who was once a refugee is marked with the refugee load for his whole life. In a visual level this uncontrollable explosion of the affect is expressed through real explosion. Flames going up into the sky into a real delirium occupy most of the place of the synthesis reminding the inextinguishable holy fire of Zoroastrianism, while playing the black and white with the intense schematization refer to the eternal struggle of the domination between light and dark.
A synthesis which consists of two or tree figures belongs to the unity with the human figures. They are families or mothers carrying their children in their arms. They follow an unspecified route. Often the emotional relationship between the members of a group is indicated more by the title of the art-work rather than the visual formulation since the person are treated as units. Every person lives his own drama, encircled by his own personal tragedy, the only and unique cohesive link between the members of these groups is nothing else their common tragically fortune. Thus for example in the art-work entitled “Family” the figures hold each other’s hands tightly but their movement is rather a movement of alienating and not of coiling whereas in the art-work “Mother with Child” the mother is wrapped in dark but the child is definitely turned towards light.
Due to the symbols, we would like to end the presentation of Serhad’s engraving creations with two art-works which do not belong to any of the previous units as a theme: “The Tower of Silence” and “The Tomb of Zaratoustra. These are unique art-pieces which are on top-scale of the pyramid of symbols that the artist uses. Although through these art-pieces the engraver continues his relation to the symbols it is obvious that the prime reason which led to the creation of these art-pieces are different, rather instinctive and subconscious than rational and coming out of experience. In the case of these art-pieces the creator is released from his promise of commitment and is abandoned in the metaphysic dimension of the things managing in this way to touch the composure of eternity. Using these two unique monuments the artist takes the chance to speak about the eternal question of life and death pulling out in the surface symbols lost back in time when Zoroastrianism one of the brightest religions of the ancient world, urged people to good deeds because that way could Ahoura Masda, the God of Good and Prince of light win the struggle of diarchy against Ariman the Prince of evil and dark.
The “Tower of Silence” an art-piece referring to the old customs of Masdaism which imposed the withdrawal of the dead from the world of the living and their placing in isolated towers on top of the hills where they were left to corruption-is the culmination of the existential agony of the artist. Fear and awe inundate our soul while facing this dark silent mass which stands in the middle of the synthesis crashing with its expressionistic drama every sense of happiness. Everything shows that death is the prince who reigns in this tower, not a far and vague death but a death which concerns every one of us personally and threatens our existence.
In the antipode of “the Tower of Silence” stands the “the Tomb of Zaratoustra”, an art-work which declares the artist’s faith to the power of light. The elements of the synthesis, which the changing of bright and dark places are placed in such a way so that the eye of the viewer focuses at the beginning on the down side of the synthesis where a tomb stands, to make it in turn to turn with the help of two triangle endings to the upper side of the synthesis where a very bright sun shines. We realize that the sun which lights Zaratoustra’s Tomb is not just a star but Zoroastrianism’s God himself who lights the dark seeing through everything. It is the ultimate human power, the unbeaten existence, the heart of the world and the centre of knowledge, according to Avesta. Under the light of this sun the monument turns into a sign-Tomb to a sign-Symbol. The symbol of the eternal domination of light. Even if we didn’t know anything about Serhad’s life “the Tower of Silence” and “the Tomb of Zaratoustra”, with the power of truth, the power of reflecting and of symbols could reveal where the artist comes from, since in the cases of these two art-works history is the one who shouts.
«nostimon imar »: Nice day, holy day. In Homer’s poet “Nostimon imar” is the day where Odyssey after many years turns back to his homeland Ithaka.
Eleni Kartsaka
Art historian
Thessaloniki, February 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)