By Kiša Lala
©AES-F From the series - Action Half Life
While a lot of contemporary art remains in a narcissistic bubble dedicated to its own self-reflexive trajectory, there’s art emerging from war zones and the Middle East that cuts through the abstractions to where it really bleeds.
Inspiration from real life in volatile regions of the ME can bring new meaning to what it feels to be a tortured artist. Iraqi artist Halim Al-Karim, defying Saddam’s compulsory military conscription during the first Gulf War, hid in the desert for 3 years in a hole in the ground, surviving from food brought to him by Bedouins. His experience gives him empathic power to express the anxieties of his subjects. Many of his prints depict veiled or gagged men and women, their identities masked or blurred, radiating mute terror.
© Halim Al-Karim 'Urban Witness' Series
Churchtank Type 8 mixed media assemblage 2010 © Kris Kuksi
