BaghdadArt

Marketing problems

and migrant artists

By Ali Jajjar

Andy Warhol, the king of Pop art, achieved his popularity on two achieved his popularity on two levels: the fi rst was the personal level, in which he designed to make his own charisma, while the second level was his success in marketing his artworks. His behaviour was generally on these two levels inside the USA.

Warhol was never far from the sponsors, his marketing manager and the rich, who were a good lapdog to him, while his marketing of Pop art during his time didn’t do any harm either.

The popularity of Pop art came through him and, in many ways, he created the term ‘art star’ - however, a star ‘art star’ - however, a star cannot be created from nothing and for each thing there is its price.

Current star Jeff Koons is a new “artist” who had good experience on Wall Street before and after his professional journey into the world of visual art. He has admitted that he tries to make marketing his fi rst attention, while his choice of Pop art was not useless because he implements variable of “his artworks”.

Jeff Koons is a deeply American artist who responds to the need of the street and a huge number of intellectuals. He often buys the rights of some Pop art from unknown artists, most of them mass-produced toys made of porcelain, plastic and rubber that are then reproduced in unfamiliar huge sizes, which gives them strange astonishing dimensions.

This game that Jeff plays is a successful one in which he earns a great deal of money and has made him extremely popular. Jeff founded his own industrial company, with the cooperation of experts and companies, on the condition that it fi ts with his choice leaving the company to depend on his own discoveries or what moves it, plus his relationships with the media.

Most of the private galleries (if not all) hope to profi t through a good percentage of the sale, but this percentage depends upon the necessity of the show and the popularity of the artist. Other galleries get the show fee, or both fee and some percentage as profi t, thus they make profi t on the shoulder of the artist and his/her efforts, by all means.

Visual market

and migrant artists’ problem

Migrant artists continuously strive under the conditions of integration and multiculturalism, which makes it hard to stay far from the art life of the context; conditions that make their

art less than the marketing conditions considered good in the west and internationally.

These necessarily depend on the benefi ts of the other’s culturally and politically situations and that must insure that the role of the sponsor and the funding body, who always decide

to whom give and not to give, of which there are dozens of examples which prove what we say.

If most of the migrant artists in Europe suffer when selling their works, whether via organizations in the host countries or the galleries, there are always excuses. Once it was the September 11th terror attacks, Eurocentrism and the misunderstanding of European culture that most migrant have, what we call “cultural differences”, or sometimes the visual

art itself that migrant artists cannot contemporise with the art world of Europe, so they stay as they came from their native countries.

A large majority of migrant artists still have the romantic behaviour and they separate themselves because they cannot pass the new styles, isms and the fast speed of experimenting with art in contemporary times, so they stay making antiques. Simultaneously, there are migrant artists who knew the roles of the game and could fi nd a space among the natives, but they are a very small number.

The moralistic marketing

and supporting associations

If migrant artists associations are not able to present their members as parallel to the native ones, to build the scene together, they are not worth mentioning, and there are many of them in Europe; there’s almost one association for each minority and most of them are not professional, they depend on the quantity not the quality, as well as working to make a little profi t that covers their activities.

That is what deepens the ideas of others that they are not professional, the marginalised abundant, though sometimes these associations do offer some activities to their national followers, yet it is still a marginalised group unable to participate in making the cultural

scenery of the country or of Europe. In addition, in marginalised venues and galleries most of them are not professional and/or just started.

The phenomena of “the migrant artist participation” is a great deal of disappointment instead of helping migrant art and artists and take it to a normal level, the little profi t that those galleries make is on account o the artist so the price of the artwork decreases all the time under the title decreases all the time under the title, “You are unknown,

It is OK if the organisational work towards migrant artists is on the size of the professional

and moralistic responsibility, but unfortunately there’s no conditions yet to allow such organisational work, and the reason there’s no sponsor or a political need to support such activities is migrants, in general, cannot lobby for art, such as

the “very well-known visual art lobby that a minority established to keep the finance inside them”.

It remains to mention the successful example of these associations in the European Union Migrant Artists Network that is the head of all in Europe because it doesn’t only work for one particular nation or group, plus it is restricted by geography. It works for all migrants across the whole of Europe and excels in its professionalism by working in needed projects in a high quality of matching subject., such as treating the topics of the exhibition projects in a high

quality of matching subject. Finally, it owes much of its success through its ability ability

to make contacts and form relationships with wellrespected venues, such as Russia’s Manege, Helsinki’s Cable Factory, Copenhagen’s Rondataarn, Vienna’s Mart Gallery and many more.

EU-MAN has received support from Finland’s Ministry of Culture since the beginning of its establishment eleven years ago and this financial support strengthens the work of the organisation professionally. EUMAN did not ignore the visual culture that has a lot to do with the social movement in Europe, meaning that EU-MAN aims to be the best in the

mainstream, as well as not forgetting the reality of migrant art.

Most other associations do not have as much experience as EU-MAN and as migrants in general we have a lack of sense and culture, since most of us do not know the necessity of the contemporary civilization. At present, more than 60% of the visual and visual culture is as important as the continuity of the market policy.

So, we have to find a space among the organisations and the audience, the collectors and the art critics as well,b because our viewers are different, our atmosphere is different and our culture is different too. If the migrant artist was dreaming of crossing the borders and breaking the taboos that are already theirs from the museums, galleries and other art organisations; they become pessimistic because these places are monopolised by their organisers and sponsors, since for this lobby there is its own conditions, and sometimes it is as though it has been passed down from grandfather to son… the heritage is an example of that.

Finally, what makes the popularity of the artist other than the price of the coin are many things, such as professionalism of the work, far or near from its contemporisation, or light by the lobby of this circle, as well as the money laundry because the artwork, like any work in our time, belongs to the offer and demand which means it is inside the roles of the market game and its behaviours - artwork remains in its circle. So, if the behaviour of the commercialism is benefiting always, so the artwork which carry the innovative the artwork which carry the innovative enjoy it through all times.

06.09.2008

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Visual art blinded by cash

By Ali Najjar

It is not easy to know the percentages of the visual artists who work in their profession in the field, because most of them are working individually and their products belong to their own individual taste, before the collective taste.

However, their opportunities in their profession in Europe has increased in comparison with other countries, even by little percentages and according to the art traditions of this or that country and the economic situation of which is consists.

. Not all visual art sections are in parallel in the labour market, so the designer stays and the photographer stays as they are, and they have more chance than painters, because there is

chance than painters, because there is work and I can estimate that of the 95% of employed are working in these professions.

Most of the visual artists do not get the work opportunities in this world, not only in Europe, and if someone gets subsidies to make an artwork that means he/she should work hard with the decision makers and their organisations, whether it was a public one or private one.

Otherwise the work of that artist can be “Waiting for Godot” because it always depends on the opportunities, accidents and some unclear procedures.

On the other hand, if somebody wants to participate in some event or competition, for instance, this belongs to the costs of the competitions and the threads that cannot be seen. In the 2003 UNESCO made a draft paper for the verifiable cultures agreement and in spring 2004 a UNESCO committee suggested to UNESCO committee suggested to protracting of verifiable cultures and protracting of verifiable cultures and protracting of verifiable cultures and protracting of verifiable cultures and international cultural market.

Throughout the monopolisation of the cultural marketing in the capital world and the stock exchange, and the help of the world trade organisation, the control of the cultural market ca

be implemented (even sometimes artistic taste of the so-called current artistic taste of the so-called current artistic taste of the so-called current art stars, and remaking the national producer in this or that country which might suit the “artistic changes, even though it not active and out of the hands of the international cultural market.

Throughout the monopolisation of the cultural marketing in the capital world and the stock exchange, and the help of the world trade organisation, the control of the cultural market ca

by force) and they can control the artistic taste of the so-called current international trend of culture.

And so by creating the themes and the art stars, and remaking the national producer in this or that country which might suit the “so called” internationa taste, which in fact often differs to

what they want. So there is always an alternative taste to continue the fi nancial manufacturing as they have informational power and qualifi ed people, as well as having the globalised media.

This is not an illusion at all, because there are only fi ve huge companies that take the decisions of making, distributing and manufacturing the art (paintings, sculptures, pictures and other printing stuff). Even in Europe, these companies control the map of the

international visual art market.

So, because they want to control the market, and to put the price that they want, they monopolise artworks of some artists presenting them as a contemporary taste to the consumers, whether they are individuals or even if they are museums. So if these artist

get the price through their bargaining with their sponsors that often means that they delete other artists from their list, since there are always a large number of artists in this or that country. Of course, they have to search for different channels to afford their food, their life, which often it is something other than art.

The economic behaviour stays as the main axis to our discussion, not the carrier of the artist, the aesthetic or the level of intellectualism, as this behaviour always depends upon the

marketing manners, so sometimes the dealers follow the economical behaviour and its games, as they reserve the artworks for this particular gallery or that, making a network

which moves the artworks inside them, so it is not an accident that we see the same artworks in this European city and it moves to some other galley in and it moves to some other galley in another European city. Considering the popularity of the artist and the artwork, and its coinciding with some event, it is not the real and practical value of the artwork, including exchanging of fault behaviour between the selected groups of rich people.

Creating new tensions of different visual culture, which was in the margin before that and giving it a huge exaggerated price, manipulating particular galleries and its branches in

many cities to some selected names, which is supposed to be in the new mainstream taste, or the renewed one. We should also consider the “cultural agents” that stop the small collectors and the local cultural authorities, and the impossibility of entering the private the impossibility of entering the private. Then moving the banks capitals, even the money laundry which happens in the visual art market in particular and the art market in general, the role of the auctions and its dealers, all these participate in one way or another destroying the income of the artists.

Perhaps if they take the visual art as a serious experience and the control of art productions at the same level, they might get more benefits, and artists can be free for their work only and then they get the profits of the giant companies who circulate a huge amount of money. It seems that we will witness in the near future new generations of artists who work with the digital media art which loses the connection with the “traditional “visual arts, because these giant companies need to support such a kind of art because the new generation of ordinary people need that type of art as well, at least that might happen in the western world where the traditions of plastic art are found.

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The third culture and the

presumptive reality

By Ali Najjar

What a visual art act demands is a space of being far from the personal emotion, towards finding unique understanding elements at once, and giving a space to the imagination activities, as the work of archiving the escaped moments.

After the conflict of the humanists’ studies that paralleled the modernism along with its history, the contemporary innovation gain its successive neighbouring shape as the media offer by the high quality accumulated knowledge through spreading out the assumed collective taste. So the experiment and dialog became a characteristic of this age. From here the presumptive term “third culture” takes its importance as forwarded stage passed the classic and the modern of the humanists.

Some times the strangeness of the contemporary visual art research by what lays of questions, is in parallel with the resource of the contemporary biological physical discoveries, discoveries which establishes individual and collective dreams through concepts that cross the unknown reality borders which is inside the imaginative level of the strange physiology, so it became a common chaos, this strangeness is one of the riddles of the equivocator contemporary which is difficult for interpreting it in a simple way, and it is some of our third culture riddle.

The third culture is a consequence of huge mixed realization regulations and irregulars goes over the imagination establishing its developing presumption reality that became realized by its products and marketing. No more that inelegancy monopolies the culture in its wide meaning, but it became even small individuals nsidie the workshop of the contemporary cultural innovations, which is still working on the marketing possibilities comparing it with a public alternatives most of the time. At the same time it governs us by its tools, elements, the media developments, marketing and the scientific capacity.

We are a part of this army of the technicians, either consciously or subconsciously, probably because technology is a character of our present time, so you cannot separate the visual art of it, only you can by the individual scale, that the person limits the hidden and the appearing parts of its form.

Cultural marketing, it is now a huge marketing which demands penetration to the horizontal and vertical neighbouring societies, as well culture can lay itself as a digesting commodities through its its innovation symbols and codes which cross the homeland, and through its observation and digesting the multicultural geography.

As much as the results of the cultural marketing seems strange or sociable, it tries continually to deceive on the exile, which helps controlling the visual tools that became through its discoveries penetrating or limiting our behavior, as we could not most of the time go over its spaces which detonating us and surrounding us continuously, and naturally became a part of our activities.

Meanwhile the world of visual art or precisely the picture worked hardly on ignoring our individual characters, that individual characters we struggle all the time to keep it as last refuge to our dreams, and we have no other way, but only to enter this world by our tools and by conscious which we try our best to be a parallel to the culture market.

If the terms were knowledgeable concepts flexible, able for crossing, well, so the term “migrant artists” which is spread through EU-MAN, unclear term, and as we understand the continuing and neighboring postmodern culture, as a horizontal culture crossing the borders of the continentals. Here I see that choosing “migrant artists” term can fit the individual innovation,

which is the characteristic of this age, and it should be liberated from the unclear local pattern.

As we are the children of the Internet, culture globalization and the super information so it is not reasonable to be orphans on of the local pattern, and the history of the modern and contemporary visual art is rich of examples of crossing the borders, so most those artists who cross the borders were 7establishers and founders of the most important movements of the visual art.

Spreading the information and the taste find its way, and we are summing in its spaces with or without our desire, we became fragmented in the space of the third culture as a future suggestion

able to be turned through unbinding the traditional methods, and through an infinitive space without borders.

The space of the new show (*) which is given to the EU-MAN in Helsinki, is like any new space which is prepared for the contemporary show, the space participated in some how of highlighting the effort of the participants artists, in the best way that they dream of, the cable factory stood as it is factory with high walls, its gray floor and its roof with huge ventilation pipes, it did compose a perfect contemporary space for the visual arts. Space, which is not separated from its surround city (out/in) and not separated from the festival atmosphere, that what gave the not separated from the festival atmosphere, that what gave the artists inspiration to construct their works as the inspiration of the space gave.

The22 artists who live and work in Europe, from different backgrounds show their artwork which was under the title of the third culture, artists dealt with this title or let say the unclear concept as they realize it, their realization which built on their archeological culture or environmental comparison or through their interpretation which appeared by the marks or symbols that they put.

The tools of the show were variable, photography, video installation, paintings, installations and sculpture s, between the traditional works and the conceptual works beside the love of experiment. video installation, paintings, installations and sculptures, between the traditional works and the conceptual works beside the love of experiment.

Through the scenery of the show we discover the knowledgeable performance aims of the show, as the title was squeezing the participant artists, so as we could find in the shown artworks, it is inevitable to categorize the artworks then we try to look for the mental engines which most of them were memorial with an intention of touching the event.

1- the photography artwork by Zhaoruo, Uzi Varon and the street sign project, the works of Zhaoruo built on a local context (Chines) with a memorial intention, but it used the influential mark ( picture of the idealistic leader which established with different elements of the leader’s aura and his political charisma) lot of artists dealt with this style and still daeling, especially the pop art.

9But Zhaoruo used this way and turn it as suits his discovery of plying with the human face as neighbour icons to a continuing time which draw attention to what is hidden behind our delicate skins and what they have similarity,( Zhaoruo turn) us back to the warmth of primitiveness of mankind.

The marks of the mankind faces are still for human, they are full of life though the little

differences which composed through the variable geographical time, the secrete of the

little changes (documentation) is what this artist concentrate on. Uzi Varon worked on the margin (in the calligraphically meaning) margin that continues the picture, as he used it as geographical dialog, resurrect which does not deny the psychological dimension and the technical treatment at the same time

The collage of the margin is not far from the meaning of the collage of the pictures; scenery used including the cultural obsession goes over the aesthetic scenery which picked up from the archeological, natural, environmental and/or the human body as bridge to a sense or touches the difference by clear or unclear details of the attention, civilized difference that Uzi mean to build some of its details, as he does not hide the meaning of reconstructing it again. . The street sign project is not far from the meaning of other artists, but only of choosing

the location of their discovery

13.05.2007

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Migration in Europe’s

museum narrative of diversity

By Ali Najjar

“If you are a democratic person that means you must conjunct your action with a confession that we never live in a democratic enough society.” jak drida

22 museums around the world are trying to clarify and work on this theme of migration in museums. They have taken the name of that theme“migration” in order to find their “migration” in order to find their place in the world, while the riddle of history (national ethnic and its migration), diversity of culture and the importance of what the museum consists is the other side of its reality and its pragmatic beneficial side.

These museums or exhibition projects are full of archive details of lifestyle of this or that group of people, and a verity of tools of behaviour to cross mankind’s groups - north/south, east/west - and throughout its history, whether it is old or new, modern or antique, until the contemporary time in which the migrant hopes to fulfil the humanistic dream.

Migrants are continually working on the geographical movements that examine the act of moving from one examine the act of moving from one examine the act of moving from one the many ways of life and behaviour of mankind’s vivid movement, or to gain a highly-developed knowledge, or to smoothly resolve a problem, which sometimes snake in order to reach their sometimes snake in order to reach their so the individual and the collective benefi ts; tricks are not separated from that, and it is not important that the migrants jump on the legality, principle ethics and legislation.

Space became the individual’s behavioural separation, after we behavioural separation, after we collective mythological illusion, and collective mythological illusion, and became full of riddles of due to its prophecy, just as Gustan Bachlar said in his phenomenology, not by its sense as it was before scientific pos-modernism.

Immigration centred on the middle of this space as obstacles most of the time, and these attempts at a migration museums projects is sort of a hypothetical barometer to such of a hypothetical barometer to such it and reach a sociological balance, because it searches for the historical documentation, folklore and religious documentation, folklore and religious attempt or integration attempt to extent.

Democracy was built in Europé through tough confl icts for many centuries, between the civil authority and the religious authority, and and the religious authority, and until they recognised him for his subjective value that holds his own decisions far from the oral authority.

The basic of this democracy obtained, at the same time, a profi t that belongs to the realizations and the intendancies, but not all intendancies and human instincts are equal in the citizen’s minds, so long as there are gaps of thinking then manners satisfy individuality; individually often and sometimes collectively.

So the immigrant/”other” becomes ignorant because democracy is behaviour and moralistic obligation and if it became empty of its moralistic values then it becomes empty of behavioural values and that is what immigrants have suffered across the whole of Europe be cause he is so whole of Europe because he is so sensitive at this point that he can easily recognise it.

The cultural arrogance is the sickness The cultural arrogance is the sickness since “native” Europeans dealt with since “native” Europeans dealt with is centred on it’s self, making heritage easy to remove for the benefit of the other - “who is strange geographically” - but that is no longer a secret compared to what communication has done globally.

Postmodernism recognises the importance of diversity and difference but they still remain. The other, “the immigrant”, should clarify all hidden psychology in order not to be misunderstood, although all of us are uncovered because of the contemporary media, which is the only one that benefits from it.

The old Arabic proverb say “Ask for the knowledge, even if it was in China” - a journey to China in Mohammad’s time was no different to Marco Polo’s travels - and the knowledge in this sense is migration - our globalised culture nowadays is collective migration to the minds and individuals.

Swiss immigrants enrich the life of the Ilis Iceland and influence the American scientifi c, economic and musical life, which is what (small number, big influence) the exhibition emphasises. This slogan (small number, big influence) can fit all the reconstruction projects after the Second World War in Europe which was depending on immigrant manpower, and then the resettled manpower, so if there is an exchange of benefits we have to recognise it and accept him as a positive “other” and not a flexible riddle that can be ignored after use. The items of Migration Museums in Europe tell, as the similar Migration Museums in the world, of hope and suffering, the ways of that migration are not similar, journeys curry its

details with it - lifestyles, ways of thinking, worshipping, different ethics, colours -, but it also hides a great desire of continuing life in better conditions, and if the other “native” understands these conditions then integration becomes civically easier.

The geographical obstacles could not stop the globalisation of music, visual art and architecture, Russian, Hungarian, Polish, Venezuelan, Italian, Austrian, French and others all established the modernism of their visual art with French flavour, while Norwegians established German expressionism, just as the Japanese participated in impressionism Africans in Cubism and Americans in postmodernism.

The geographical cultural movement (the migrated on) took culture as a first priority and it lost the geographical ethnical character to the benefit of the wider humanity. Human cultural products are mixed with integration and we are waiting for when this will happened to all human activities. We have the obsession of selecting the concept of migration (exile) to the benefit of neighbourhood and the useful fruitful mixing, far from any old taboo.

If the meaning of the Migration Museum in Europe is documenting what can be uncovered, then so we are uncovered, but the title of migration remains problematic in its conceptual defination and, at the same time, can be defined in many ways.

10.12.2008

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Essential attempt to read

Salah AL-Masoudi artworks

By Ali Najjar

“ AL-Masoudi tries his best to be out of that darkness, but still often he faces difficulties of that, the details of his artworks which is full of violence positions, hide an attempt to destabilize the artwork itself”

AL-Masoudi can’t get red of his personal history (that at least what we see of his experience) though it is a distinguished limit of an ordinary Iraqi character. AL-Masoudi walks in the dark part of that character- the apparent part and the hidden one at the same time.

AL-Masoudi tries his best to be out of that darkness, but still often he faces difficulties of that, the details of his artworks which is full of violence positions, hide an attempt to destabilize the artwork itself, they are such a works which take itself in pieces, crumble the imaginary oriental romantic heritage (the erotic and the sentimental) although that heritage has colorful, fantastic figures, Salah tries sometimes to take the body or the nature in pieces. Not for exile composition try, but for the rearrangement of what he destroyed, one by one of that what remain of the violence of his attempt!

If Salah knows that, taking the body in pieces goes via sentimental channels, it is sentimental dealing with storage of memory, which does not leave its vivid history, though for narrow and ignorant space. And then bring some details to ancient Iraqi history gradually (history which is in parallel to our contemporary history)

And then Salah put himself as a witness to the chronicle valance, to emphasize rooted identity to Iraqi or as they call it the “black land” the land that naturally gives the black petrol which what remain gives the black petrol which what remain of its buried inhumation resources, or taking in pieces the influence of the poison contemporary wars.

Salah highlights the technique in his works to ease its details manoeuvre, on the limits of taking down or up its composition, even that he tries more than one time to efface some of its

marks, still there is many indications shows us Salah’s attempts.

If the history (the Sumerian body) appears in Salah’s works, its presentation comes through demand or bring to as witness to the chronicle violence- the eye is the centre of the world and details are the map of the earth- so what remain of the body fragmented difficult to realize or generally to know the concept of the Iraqi contemporary art.

Arabic writing has strange distinguished characteristics, as line drawings continue or cut, it looses the straightness on the account of its carves and it leaves fragmented pointillists around its circles to fill the surface satisfied or filled with what it leaves of emotional. As this is the case in Salah’s paintings he does not feel satisfied with implementing his primer visual maps (his very first items that cover the artwork’s surface). He tries to delete some of these items or add others line or colour effects to increase the inner tension (the monologue of the opposite), which leads to accelerating the emotional state.

His trails might not be very far from the act of dotting and away from the horizontal lining; a mood like that never leaves something to the accident never leaves something to the accident never leaves something to the accident outside his awareness borders.

Salah’s work as they appear to the observer of his changes throughout his artistic time, still

uses its memory (it looks like a visual monument that has not lost its primitive characteristics since the beginning of the 70s). monument that has not lost its primitive characteristics since the beginning of the 70s).

Although time and geography changed many times, he went on in two different paths, the artistic professionalism and the visual one and it seems that when these two areas crossed each other, they enhanced his artistic performance as the body or some fragments of it forms the most important item in his visual items, which can not be ignored even if he was working on a landscape as it contains some of his emotional fragments.

At the same time, we can’t ignore the virtual holes that are contained in his artworks and throughout the painting surface, it stops us sometimes, or leads us to a gap that does not penetrate the surface but to cover what’s left from his brushes strokes, with details that he can not tolerate its sharpness. His memory, which he exhausts sometimes in completing his works, comes out through these virtual holes as a legend of time.

The circle or its curves is a medium for a hole that is emerging, a hole (gap, center, bottom, womb) is a part of a whirlpool or a mental uprising, forms here a round mentality that comes against the static trend, a mentality that inherited its being, even though there is a long experience that tries to make it an international trend.

As the space would leave between the bodies (palm 2) a trick that is trying to win the eternity, Salah’s works come with this virtual formula, palm (body) soil (blackness) tenderness, aggression, closeness and distance as it is formed in the top (the bird’s eye) holes that are covered with the errors of the time and the impossible salvation. Footnotes.

In the beginning of the 70s I visited Basra with the late (Dr. Qutaiba A sheikh Nouri) and some other artists, artist Shawkat Arrabiai took us in a boat trip across “shat alarab” and the amount of palm trees in Al-Khora area was amazing, Dr. Qutaiba started a discussion on the space that separate palms from each other. magic that is deep inside emptiness or its vanishing or disappearance.

The emptiness here looks like it is as much as the palm trees as life goes through it with all its force, a space that was taken by the mythical inheritance and started to penetrate us somehow The border of life that is hidden between its layers tells somewhat about what these spaces hide in Salah’s works that are forests of Iraqi palm trees that are scattered throughout its unkind contemporary times, exhausted by wars and got poisoned of them, got stiffed and crucified and left cracks and wounds allover its body that is stretching around the water.

1.Salah Giad Al-Masoudi was born in Basra, southern Iraq in 1947

-He studied art in Baghdad and resumed his studies in Paris, where he has lived since 1976

-Participated in personal and group exhibitions in Baghdad, Kuwait, Paris, Athens, Moscow,

Tokyo, Finland, Bulgaria and many others

-Got many art prizes from Iraq, Kuwait, Bulgaria and France.. Basra is the world’s richest place with . palm trees.

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Gothenburg International Biennial

By Ali Najjar

[Political alternatives, challenges of the opposition and contemporary technology of the visual art]

Picture, as a cultural, artistic and media term, smoothly invites us to attack ourselves in a

variety of ways, then it possesses us by its attraction, and if the attraction is justified, it works around the clock because it doesn’t come from nothing, but through sociological and psychological work. It uses the fantasy code with unlimited variety, while in the service of politics, the marketplace or both simultaneously it can catch us all over the planet.

This picture stands as a ghost on top of our heads, or penetrates us, confusing our minds,

so it leaves us, as consequence, under its heavy shadow, which is parallel to its harmony or contrast. If we say that visual art through the first decade of the 21st century works on picture/culture or Picture/economy, then the meaning is not absent to the politician; they use the picture as a flexible document laying a mine under their plans.

For the politicians this is news or personal charisma, it faces money laundry, or crossing of the boundary, and so on among all of the contemporary political games. It’s a great white lie that appears no matter what the visual artist tries, while he/she, as part of the cultural global scenery, tries to work on new media, whether it is photograph, video, fi lm or print.

This is what we saw during the biennial event in Gothenburg, Sweden, last year, when projects on the theme“Political alternatives and challenge of the opposition” were exhibited by artists from different counties each showing how their artworks suited and worked in parallel with the theme of the show.

If politics is a survival reality, as is the art of possibility, then we can deal with this unclear concept by treating it visually, via ordinary technique and unordinary layout, as the artist receives support from the fund organizations though their addressing of “Political alternatives

and challenge of the opposition” and artists will certainly work on the theme/event, not as possible solutions, but as a pile or intellectual tables of information, perhaps even as a personal or collective archive.

Artists attempted to begin a dialogue with the event, even if there is an aesthetic link to the artworks, so it is about the idea though the idea that sometimes seems like a hidden riddle inside the artwork. Our discoveries stay at the limit of our inspirations and our self-experiences, and so long as these artworks are full of their ideas and politically- led inspiration, we can ensure that mental visions propagate and are not too far from the area of the event. 28 artists from countries across the world participated in this biennial event that was in parallel with Decomenta, held in Kassle, Germany, and the biennial in Venice. 55 shows were presented at the GIB in its fi ve spaces, which included galleries, museums and private venues. Eight of the 55 were video-art and 15 were photography with different technique, the remainder of the shows were installations sculptures or mixed media. Paintings disappeared totally, of course, although that was not strange since the title of the show did not allow a space for painting in general.

The show focused upon cultural, social and humanitarian attitudes, it dealt with a number of artworks that protested in optimistic voices, via techniques that parallel the pictures in documentary and the event’s violence, even if some of the works shown as “just a document” most of them showed the secrets of politics’ purpose. However, each artist had the right to proof her\his own map - either cultural, geographical or sentential - and they remain

documentary’s ability to strengthen our confi dence in the techniques and activities of the new generation of young artists

Presentation of some of the works:

The Afghani artist’s work is like a trap, through its attractive scene which controls most of its space. Even though it was a video installation, its cinema screen showing virtual cable and the world of Afghanistan during and after the war, a ‘virtual Kabul’, reminded that, like any capital city in the world, it went through the destruction of war and it became heavy on its inhabitants, who were invalid even as trace.

The 15 young people responsible for the video installation artwork were involved in a fantasy or absurd duty, or it seems so, but they made a “super act” in front of a destroyed building, some of its outside walls were still standing. Dressed in black, these young men began tried

to pull the building down by ropes, even though it was a charade they pulled in rhythm and the effect was representative of symbolic pulling.

Young people try to pull even if it is a destroyed old building, it will disappear soon. In a regular and irregular rhythm the viewer feels as though they are pulling a boat against the stream, the young people ended the scene by showing paper beside a grave, an elegy of time, everything in it is destroyed, but is very diffi cult to erase.

The magic of this work was in the slow-motion of the film and the crossings of its white lines “ropes” and of course the bodies of the people dressed in black and grey, with wild backgrounds, assembled as if there was a conflict moving this fi lm. It must be the contrast/conflict of “life distraction” concerning which political decisions live on both levels, both local and abroad. These decisions convene radically or pragmatically, so if there was a loser it should be the harmless ordinary human.

From Russia there were two works that grabbed attention through their differences in techniques and visions, especially the sculpture work of the group, which was entitled

“Half of the fi ghter’s life”. There were also fi ve bronze sculptures of naked children with guns and imaginative helmets in scenery closest to the imaginary scientific film.

This work insisted on the infl uence of the hypothetical picture by adapting the gun machine as pop-culture in contemporary times, so the work of this group presented the inventions of contemporary life, which politics uses as a tool to create a generation dealing with the guilty

imaginary scientific discoveries, leaving the second work about the cold war of the two blocks

A house is a nice place of living, it is as though the artist imagined a place of pride and challenge, which is what we see through the small model of a building, clawed through it, so it looses its lower-half to the viewer; the rest of the buildings were normal packing boxes, so it symbolises the inhabitants’ quarters.

Artists try to say it is not a solution to the housing problems in those countries that depends on the limited economy, but it is the destruction of taste, heritage and art. We are in the highest need to treat it and enrich our visions and souls.

Jan Alexander, in her work, the guard turned the borders to wires around a green fi eld while in one of its corners a man stands with a bird head. This bird head man seems forced to stand in this green land, which is beside some other land, also surrounded by wires, and covered in hundreds of rusty scythes.

If this small space is prepared for infertility, scythes must barren and there is no help for mankind. The sky will be closed and the earth will be useless, and if there should

be some miracle that saves him then that’s the duty of the three guards representing the boundaries in a world that limits our movement or even our breaths. If politics pitch the army against the environment then the highest interest will remain with the power of the money and the control of the decision makers.

At the entrance of the city gallery there was a sculpture to the group of “democracy”. The sculpture was a sitting man full of civil outlook, he wears a bob-belt which pushes the bottom of his right hand. Our contemporary time served the show, so, if such a man receives us at the entrance of the gallery then we have to imagine or discover the rest of the show through the guilty political message.

The photography of Heindrik Zeitler, with its colourful attraction though the colour red in many pictures of his show, archived democratic housing and he uses it to observe the most secret corners during the young hood time. Paths, entrances, even sleeping or living places, crowded spaces of everything, do not represent anything, while shoes, beds, books, musical instruments are all absurdly consumed in this absurd life, or in its way to be absurd, crowded of the places that gave it life or a kind of freedom. Freedom does not mean completed, since “it is a young hood struggle” and it is not completed with the graft registration that covers many of the walls, appearing even in the hidden corners.

The body is full of its freedom, often the mental attack of the space that freedom provides through its regular and irregular logic, and as the environment gives its space, sometimes to be released, or sometimes to narrow it, as experimentalism does, yet how wide it is at the same time narrow. However, the red presence in these pictures is a vivid Gloria to the documents, vivid in the respect of the creative game.

The video installation work by Adel Abidin, who lives in Finland, was about the Iraqi situation, though Adel built it via an intensive way, and that is what the artist meant because he took it and presented the analysis of the roots of the destruction act of “bombardment, suicide, the individual and the collective one”. If we teach the child a second language, not his fi rst language, with words like ‘kill’, ‘stole’ and ‘terror’, this act will destroy the people later.

What remains to be mentioned is that the presented artworks were effectively direct with their details and colourful sceneries, even they were dreams; a dream is a brightened picture, it nether does leave our mental or our imagination easily, so if the picture was full of ideas and visions, it does not leave its geographical surround, and that was what the show insisted upon.

All the artists were working on the social culture denying the determined geographical location, visual art of today by its tools and techniques opened up on all horizons equally to all continentals of our globe.

28-11-2007

of the contemporary political games. It’s a

great white lie that appears no matter what the visual artist

tries, while he/she, as part of the cultural global scenery,

video, fi lm or print.

This is what we saw during the biennial event in Gothenburg,

Sweden, last year, when projects on the theme “Political

alternatives and challenge of the opposition” were

exhibited by artists from different counties each showing

how their artworks suited and worked in parallel with the

theme of the show.

If politics is a survival reality, as is the art of possibility,

then we can deal with this unclear concept by treating

it visually, via ordinary technique and unordinary layout,

as the artist receives support from the fund organizations

though their addressing of “Political alternatives

and challenge of the opposition” and artists will certainly

work on the theme/event, not as possible solutions, but as

a pile or intellectual tables of information, perhaps even

as a personal or collective archive.

Artists attempted to begin a dialogue with the event, even

if there is an aesthetic link to the artworks, so it is about

the idea though the idea that sometimes seems like a hidden

riddle inside the artwork. Our discoveries stay at the

limit of our inspirations and our self-experiences, and so

long as these artworks are full of their ideas and politically-

led inspiration, we can ensure that mental visions

propagate and are not too far from the area of the event.

28 artists from countries across the world participated in

this biennial event that was in parallel with Decomenta,

held in Kassle, Germany, and the biennial in Venice. 55

shows were presented at the GIB in its fi ve spaces, which

included galleries, museums and private venues. Eight of

the 55 were video-art and 15 were photography with different

technique, the remainder of the shows were installations,

sculptures or mixed media. Paintings disappeared

totally, of course, although that was not strange since the

title of the show did not allow a space for painting in general.

The show focused upon cultural, social and humanitarian

attitudes, it dealt with a number of artworks that protested

in optimistic voices, via techniques that parallel the

pictures in documentary and the event’s violence, even if

some of the works shown as “just a document” most of

them showed the secrets of politics’ purpose. However,

each artist had the right to proof her\his own map - either

cultural, geographical or sentential - and they remain

documentary’s ability to strengthen our confi dence in the

techniques and activities of the new generation of young

artists

Presentation of some of the works:

The Afghani artist’s work is like a trap, through its attractive

scene which controls most of its space. Even though

it was a video installation, its cinema screen showing virtual

cable and the world of Afghanistan during and after

the war, a ‘virtual Kabul’, reminded that, like any capital

city in the world, it went through the destruction of war

and it became heavy on its inhabitants, who were invalid

even as trace.

The 15 young people responsible for the video installation

artwork were involved in a fantasy or absurd duty,

or it seems so, but they made a “super act” in front of a

destroyed building, some of its outside walls were still

standing. Dressed in black, these young men began tried

to pull the building down by ropes, even though it was a

charade they pulled in rhythm and the effect was representative

of symbolic pulling.

Young people try to pull even if it is a destroyed old

building, it will disappear soon. In a regular and irregular

rhythm the viewer feels as though they are pulling a boat

against the stream, the young people ended the scene by

showing paper beside a grave, an elegy of time, everything

in it is destroyed, but is very diffi cult to erase.

The magic of this work was in the slow-motion of the fi lm

and the crossings of its white lines “ropes” and of course

the bodies of the people dressed in black and grey, with

wild backgrounds, assembled as if there was a confl ict

moving this fi lm. It must be the contrast/confl ict of “lifedistraction”

concerning which political decisions live on

both levels, both local and abroad. These decisions convene

radically or pragmatically, so if there was a loser it

should be the harmless ordinary human.

From Russia there were two works that grabbed attention

through their differences in techniques and visions, especially

the sculpture work of the group, which was entitled

“Half of the fi ghter’s life”. There were also fi ve bronze

sculptures of naked children with guns and imaginative

helmets in scenery closest to the imaginary scientifi c

fi lm.

This work insisted on the infl uence of the hypothetical

picture by adapting the gun machine as pop-culture in

contemporary times, so the work of this group presented

the inventions of contemporary life, which politics uses

as a tool to create a generation dealing with the guilty

imaginary scientifi c discoveries, leaving the second work

about the cold war of the two blocks

A house is a nice place of living, it is as though the artist

imagined a place of pride and challenge, which is what

we see through the small model of a building, clawed

through it, so it looses its lower-half to the viewer; the

rest of the buildings were normal packing boxes, so it

symbolises the inhabitants’ quarters.

Artists try to say it is not a solution to the housing problems

in those countries that depends on the limited economy,

but it is the destruction of taste, heritage and art. We

are in the highest need to treat it and enrich our visions

and souls.

Jan Alexander, in her work, the guard turned the borders

to wires around a green fi eld while in one of its corners a

man stands with a bird head. This bird head man seems

forced to stand in this green land, which is beside some

other land, also surrounded by wires, and covered in hundreds

of rusty scythes.

If this small space is prepared for infertility, scythes must

barren and there is no help for mankind. The sky will be

closed and the earth will be useless, and if there should

be some miracle that saves him then that’s the duty of the

three guards representing the boundaries in a world that

limits our movement or even our breaths. If politics pitch

the army against the environment then the highest interest

will remain with the power of the money and the control

of the decision makers.

At the entrance of the city gallery there was a sculpture

to the group of “democracy”. The sculpture was a sitting

man full of civil outlook, he wears a bob-belt which pushes

the bottom of his right hand. Our contemporary time

served the show, so, if such a man receives us at the entrance

of the gallery then we have to imagine or discover

the rest of the show through the guilty political message.

The photography of Heindrik Zeitler, with its colourful

attraction though the colour red in many pictures of his

show, archived democratic housing and he uses it to observe

the most secret corners during the young hood time.

Paths, entrances, even sleeping or living places, crowded

spaces of everything, do not represent anything, while

shoes, beds, books, musical instruments are all absurdly

consumed in this absurd life, or in its way to be absurd,

crowded of the places that gave it life or a kind of freedom.

Freedom does not mean completed, since “it is a

young hood struggle” and it is not completed with the

graft registration that covers many of the walls, appearing

even in the hidden corners.

The body is full of its freedom, often the mental attack of

the space that freedom provides through its regular and

irregular logic, and as the environment gives its space,

sometimes to be released, or sometimes to narrow it, as

experimentalism does, yet how wide it is at the same time

narrow. However, the red presence in these pictures is a

vivid Gloria to the documents, vivid in the respect of the

creative game.

The video installation work by Adel Abidin, who lives in

Finland, was about the Iraqi situation, though Adel built

it via an intensive way, and that is what the artist meant

because he took it and presented the analysis of the roots

of the destruction act of “bombardment, suicide, the individual

and the collective one”. If we teach the child a

second language, not his fi rst language, with words like

‘kill’, ‘stole’ and ‘terror’, this act will destroy the people

later.

What remains to be mentioned is that the presented artworks

were effectively direct with their details and colourful

sceneries, even they were dreams; a dream is a

brightened picture, it nether does leave our mental or our

imagination easily, so if the picture was full of ideas and

visions, it does not leave its geographical surround, and

that was what the show insisted upon.

All the artists were working on the social culture denying

the determined geographical location, visual art of today

by its tools and techniques opened up on all horizons

equally to all continentals of our globe.

.............................................................................................................................

To enrich, not deprive

By Ali Najjar

” We do not know anything about love or living together in mutual life without record. Unconditional hosting, which later became legal, is the basic condition. I am not sure that unconditional hosting belongs to morals - however, how to be moral without hosting.”

- Jack Dreda-

If immigration is a problem for European countries, and it is so from many different respects, then the term ‘foreign’ remains one of these problems at the highest level.

This is very clear in the cultural sector of each European country, through interactive mixing of the society, while “some times, it seems very limited” and politics play a main role in it, with terms like, ‘immigration’, asylum seekers’ and ‘foreigner’ becoming a mass of mixedup meanings; they become ready terms to serve up in the integration policy of this or that country.

Integration has its own calculations concerning losing and vulnerability conditions, so it keeps itself as a harmonious plan in the society, which is what politicians calculate for one or two generations. It seems that the integration process is gaining fast in Europe because of global culture and technology, so it is ready to cross the borders or to close them.

Visual art, as a tool in this process, is very important because it has programmatic influences via the “visual, sound and light”. However, a clear mistake interferes with the integration process and that is the use of these terms and then deporting the different; this is clear in the integration policy of European countries

Sweden, for instance, “Where I have lived and worked since...” cultural authorities have already made the decision and they have the power, but when any question comes to the migrant “foreigners” they just have beautiful words, unimplemented promises and they are always without a plan, as they do for the normal native.

I offer here two examples.

First example

In the summer of 2006, migrant artists in Malmlö each received an invitation to a seminar to aid their integration, answer problems, overcome provisiona obstacles and suggest future plans. The invitation came from a committee created by the artists union, painters union and Sydsvenskan, a local newspaper, in cooperation with one “migrant “artist, and because the secretary of the artists union was a photographer there was also a presentation about photography… it was a long presentation.

The migrant artist made a presentation about his professional life and his integration in a very personal presentation; no suggestions were discussed, no future plans offered and not even an imaginative plan about the migrant artists in Sweden was suggested. The people who organised the seminar could not find the time to discuss the proposals or listen to any questions from the audience.

In addition, there wasn’t even a response to the important question of putting a definition to the term ‘foreign artists’ in the time of globalisation to which most of audience objected. As this seminar was planned to make useful objectives and the result was a continuing project, everybody knew the mistake was the seminar’s preparation and its aim, so it was born dead. Everybody then left without saying goodbye.

Second example

Under the title “Activating and marketing the works of the migrant artists”, the Swedish Arts Council STA TENSKONSTRAD made interviews with migrant artists and kindly asked them to send profi les, portfolios, publications, attributes and any relevant material that might help their professionalism in that might help their professionalism in Sweden.

The announced title was very attractive and encouraged almost all of Sweden’s migrant artists to respond, but, just like the fi rst example, there was something wrong in the arrangement, a mistake had happened. What that mistake was nobody really knows, perhaps it was a simple misunderstanding or receiving the otherness, or the policy of openness to the other.

It was very unusual to deny the cultural and strategic solution to the increasing society of migrants in general and the artists among them, in particular. The Arts Council went on to declare that they had the right to keep the whole archive that they had collected for three years and then return it to the artists.

The result of that was that some relevant organizations or individuals will see the portfolios and then they might contact the artists. However, we saw that there was another aim, since some people were asked to implement handcraft works, yet all of whom had been asked were not migrants, even though that is what we were expecting.

All had been arranged, so that the cultural authorities knew immediately to whom they had asked and given the work, as if they just wanted to justify the work socially or legally. Otherwise it is not logically that the cultural authority organisation paid any attention to migrant artists as competitors to the others, but they made this act according to protocol.

Of course, it is very possible to activate the situation of migrant artists and place it in front of reality, but who wants this and what is in it for them? However, we still have hope that someone will read our suggestion as we see:

1: Make an evaluation of the provisional artists and help with their integration in society.

2: Print an annual catalogue that allows migrant artists “on the truck”, so to say .

3: Give them a chance to equally participate in collective and solo exhibitions as we know that in Sweden there are particular artists for each gallery leaving the chance for migrant artists as very little.

4: Create an offi cial website that is linked to the offi cial one of the natives. This will result in helping the market recognise them as artists and not as strange bodies - this will also help collectors to buy from them.

5: The European space has a very wide capacity to accept the other, but a need for others, precisely the visual art world, and by supporting activities as such European policy will be pushed forward toward multiculturalism and the right integration. This will enrich culture, not deprive.

.............................................................................................................................

Visual art blinded by cash

By Ali Najjar

. Not all visual art sections are in parallel in the labour market, so the designer stays and the photographer stays as they are, and they have more chance than painters, because there is chance than painters, because there is work and I can estimate that of the 95% of employed are working in these professions.

Otherwise the work of that artist can be “Waiting for Godot” because it always depends on the opportunities, accidents and some unclear procedures.

Throughout the monopolisation of the cultural marketing in the capital world and the stock exchange, and the help of the world trade organisation, the control of the cultural market ca

by force) and they can control the artistic taste of the so-called current international trend of culture.

And so by creating the themes and the art stars, and remaking the national producer in this or that country which might suit the “so called” internationa taste, which in fact often differs to

what they want. So there is always an alternative taste to continue the fi nancial manufacturing as they have informational power and qualifi ed people, as well as having the globalised media.

international visual art market.

The economic behaviour stays as the main axis to our discussion, not the carrier of the artist, the aesthetic or the level of intellectualism, as this behaviour always depends upon the

marketing manners, so sometimes the dealers follow the economical behaviour and its games, as they reserve the artworks for this particular gallery or that, making a network

Creating new tensions of different visual culture, which was in the margin before that and giving it a huge exaggerated price, manipulating particular galleries and its branches in

.....................................................................................................................

Virtual Boundaries

By Ali Najjar

If we assume that people of the world as atoms of sand of the sand clock, so sure we catch or freeze the places of these atoms, as their space is so slippery and ever moving, though each one these atoms has its own different physical consistency, so sure our consistencies are different, although our individual atoms are like our finger prints, we move in this continuing geographical change.

If we assume that this globe that we live in was not on the shape of spherical, but a flat surface, and was divided into four parts, north, south west and east (even though it is not so in the reality, but it is in the assumed virtual reality) and if we assume that this flat world faces geological upheavals in different times, sure the four boundaries will be crushed, or perhaps we should invent a new way excluding the term “boundary” and we should reduce the four directions to one surface, all of these assumptions are not illusions, because the crush is continues.

Earth is not stable neither the ozone layer, our tools and ways of information are not stable either, although we have entered new virtual reality in all its viable ghostly information, we have still to practice to live together in a fruitful positive way with this reality, so if the earth was spherical (globe), it is now hypothetically flat. It is not possible that we gaze vertically after the culture behaved horizontally, spread in our contemporary general context, so all scientific and political organizations became marginal and the role of media became the main one.

We, visual artists, are from different typographical backgrounds gathered in our association (EU-MAN), trying to make this new general space a reality, and the flat space is our widest space to our activities, so we try through our hybrid languages, complicated units, successive changes, vertical relationships and our new context.

The open space is our area produce our visual work, this depends to our different and mixed opinions, genetically this depends to our different and mixed opinions, genetically with one’s self and with the others through its successive channels as well, so, since we emphasis on the “in-between” culture, It is not our only discovery, but it is our contemporary information age.

We believe that the “in-between” culture is our changeable tool, so, it makes in the general meaning

a base of our international cultural movement, which is wider and more active, but from this “in-between” we dig our receiving consciousness deeper, as it widens our visual our receiving consciousness deeper, as it wi and general at the same time, and in the time of

dens our visual contemporary visual map. Practicing visual art has an own world, as it is individual and general at the same time, and in the time of media tools spread, we believe that we should be on the mainstream, and because that the media tools spread a general international taste almost to everyone from the beginning of the 20th century. It is now us. It became an important part of our mental and visual because of the changing of the controlling process of information, practicing visual art is rooted in us. It became an important part of our mental and visual changes. Although the terminology does not have a major role in the process of cultural construction, it now became confusing and lost its superior role. became confusing and lost its superior role.

Migration became s continental transit, shaking up the constants of terminlogy that is sealing the geographic ghetto. Culturally, it has been enjoying a dynamic that is shaking the parameters that are no longer consistent with our information age. Migrating is no longer to the north or south, it is now to the broad flat land

...........................................................................................................................

The Mediterranean Partnership

Moroccan visual art an example

By Ali Najjar

When you pass through any Moroccan city , you hear many languages , usually you hear some French words, or some Spanish or even some times Italian , through these tongues you hear the Arabic, Amazigy ( Barbary ) to that extent which you make a language composition that is far from the Arabic in the east side of the Arab world .

As the Franch language is dominating daily life, it is dominating the cultural life of the cuntry, in almost all cultural products, so, still there are a lot of cultural and philsophical Moroccan publications out of the frame of the Arabic language, if it has not been translated into Arabic.

The langugage ,,hybridism,, makes a vivid path for understanding others (the European Mediterranean) through its interfering of the cultural and behavioural depth to that imaginative other. The imaginative other is possible here, in our contemporary time, just to break the traditional borders, as the new incredible information system passes by.

The matter is not limited to information form out or inside the media by its huge tools, but the visual art is one of the pillars of the midia or the whole system, and it is not strange that Maroccan artists invested this important channel toward going through and been spread to the near cotenant, using the visual products for its special location, for its huge creativities as it has variable of quantity by a humanistic way, which is suitable to interferenece and spread by easiest ways, which always cross the limited national border to make important paths for a new location that I can call the geographical relationship, strengthening through it the concept of intercommunication.

Intercommunication, which is an important joint of the cultural globalisation joints, whech is more active on the cultural, aesthetical and knowledge production levels, as it is clear that Maroccan are preparing for an equal prtnership to all Mediterranean shores throughout the Maroccan visual arts experience, which Moroccans want it to be exchangeable intercommunication which the north of Mediterranean, which is a vivid example, although it is very young, as the statistics say:

1- Participating in Paris Biennale 1956 mentioned the level of the participating Maroccan artworks by many art critics, such as the Italian Lionello Venturi as said:

Surprise comes ftom Morocco .)

2- - Rabat exhibition for the Maroccoan visual art 1963-1964, participants were 25 artists from Paris school of art.

3-The newest participation was the group of visual artists in the UK (The Wonderful Fund Collection) with the Maroccan visual art in Funon exhibition in Marakech museun 2005.

4- (Solibarity Cultures) was the title of the exhibition which was held in Casablanca that was at the same year on the order of (FAM) who is sponsored by the UNESCO, so there were a lot of female participants from the Mediterranean countries such as Grecece, Turey, Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus and Arab countries of the Mediterranean.

5- Other examples of this year, is the photo exhibition for the French-Maroccoan association (SNAP 11) in Rabat City that the exhibition occupied the most important tow venuse in the capital.

Other vivid example, from the geographical cultural aesthical work point of view and its internationality , the Maroccan visual art group (EL PLACER DEL SIMBOLO) showed their works last year at Martel hotel in Spanish city of Mirabella, sponsored by the Andalusia cultural centre, for the interaction of the Spanish cultural environment, the organisation of (FMC), which made an exchange of two exhibitions, for the Maroccoan group and for some other Spanish group called (ARTISTA PLASTICOS DE VALGECIRAS).

The Maroccoan group showed in AL-Hamra Gallery in Andulusia and the Spanish group showed in AL-Nadera Gallery in Rabat.

Notices on the exhibition :

............................................

Accept that the Maroccoan visual art movement works on its local resources and its environment, there mixes of foreign influences control its evolution, which are not far from their familiar cultural environment that is the modern schools of art, the Franch , the Spanish and Italian.

Fiarst, decause of the mixed colonial history, second, of the direct output of the research of the Moroccan artosts themselves in these Mediterrnean neighbour countries.

Here we can find a huge similarity in performing area and then the professionalism of the art objects, which aws not strange that become integrated and then to find a space of mutual taste, sometimes inspired by the differences of the geographical colours expressions, and som other times on the calligraphy which is interfered by the Moroccan art products throughout the appeared influence of the southern Mediterranean on the northern part of it.

These artistic products that are exchanged on many of details of emotional expression, especially withe the Franch and Spanish products. In this show we find very clear similarities with the Moroccan (Mekky Plamino) and the works of the Spanish (Blanca Orozco) as we do not deny the Spanish Tepec on most of the Moroccoan art which works on the surface technique inspired by both Mediterranean coasts.

As the climate and environment of Morocco influenced the European visual art stages, which it was an important resource to activate creativities of light and fantasy in the visual art of Europe in general, so the exchange of location now crosses the one sided environment influence to many of the contemorary practical visual details.

Then the huge space of the intercommunication ( the output of the mainstream digital society), this exchange precisely establishing and preparing at the same time a new suitable space for humanistic, emotional, pragmatic, and equal future partnership that the human sociaty hopes for.

..............................................................................................................................................

Ali Najjar Sweden on the April 2006

...........................................................................................................................

Tapper-popermajer Art Gallerry

By Ali Najjar

The Tapper-popermajer Art Gallerry has emerged as one of most respected and trusted contemporary art gallerries in the dynamic Oeresund region of Sweden . By means of active dialogue with private clients whow seek investmenets and collectors items , to companies wishing to convey a disiinct message through their display of fine-art objects, the gallery has built up a strong reputation . By attending major art fairs and throught joint collaboration with a large body of artists, respected art galleres and institutions, the Tapper-popermajer Art gallery has promoted some of the finest talents in a comprehensive exhibition range, including international art collections, photography, sculpture, painting , graphics, and other forms of artistic expression, Every year in addition to the permanent collections are presented works of the avant-garde and upcoming younger artists .

U.C, intervewed the director of TP. Gallery Mr. Hans Tapper and made useful dialog with him and he was very kind to answer us , and open new horzon to our reders.

U.C, You started your gallery project 5 years ago, the first venue was not as the current one, how did you manage to increase your activity ?

We believe it is important to be dynamic keep evolving as gallery in order to stay on top of the competition and to recruir the very best talents in contemporary art . In the fall of 2004 we moved to very large gallery premises at a very good location in Malmoe . Although expensive this was strategically a good dicision since we have reached many new clients and significantly widened our customer base. It is , however, not the location and the gallery space that is the most important, but rather the quality of the gallery that we aim to constantly imporove .

U.C: As will be known, at the current time a lot of gallerries in Europe are closing down, while your gallery is steadily improving . What is the secret behind that ?

2- We do work withe many international artists and galleries . The reason for this is that we like to work internationally . The good thing about having an international profile is that we also have a lot of interntional clients . We do not focus solely on the local marcket but aim to reach clients all over the world . We also participatae in international art fairst .

Question 3: You havr worked withe a lot of migrant artists, European and non-European, in many exhibitions, and they were distinguished and recognised publicly as well as academiccally . Do you bleve in multi-culturalism? Or what ?

3-Tha art scene in Sweden is focused on local artists, and many Seedish artists with a foreign bakground are having a hard time to find opportunities to exhibitid and sell their work. We of course have to take into consideration what our clients want to buy, but we have a great responsbility to show the art that we feel deserves to be presented, regardless of nationality, and not to let commercial considerations take over our judgement . We pride ourselves in showing only the art we really feel is the very beast . Because we believe in what we do, we do not charge our our artists for exhibitions . The principle must be the new artists should be largely covered by the gallery. This is important for our cridibility . If we want to take a financial risk it means that we must believe in the artists that we represent.

.................................................................................................................

Ali Najjar .. Malmö ..Sweden

..............................................................................................................

The new of (UR ) gallery

By Ali Najjar Malmö - Sweden 2005-9-14

The forth exhibition of EU-MAN was opened on Saturday the 10^th of september 2005 at UR gallery , participants in this exhibition were : Avtarjeet Dhanjal, England, Andrea Bauer, Austria, Vivian Bondy and Seamus Brogan, Denmark and Amir Khatib, Finland.

Avtarjeet Dhanjal is occupied with the spirit of metals and stones, the search of life behind the roughness of these materials, at the same time he does not hesitate to flirt with the darkness and to start a dialogue with its vague, hidden worlds, a special love, which is some of the rituals of his meditating worship .

( Stone in the morning, flash in the evening .)

This minimalist artist learned the language of silence, throght his practises of adapting the stone,s spiritual value, since he started his first sculpture, so, he was not far from the sophism and precisely HALlAJ in his frieze (obvious, obscure, near, far,. Hi is the indescribable) .

His artwork that he implemented in UR gallery was a repeating of the same idia, so he did not try to proof the ordinary architectural value in an empty space, in hypothetical space, wich peanted in a nightly dark blue colour, throwing clean white salt on its ground, wich is the shape of a planet, was a sentimental movement to the far real space.

The space, as it gave its visual duty, moved the blue silence and created huge scenery crossed over the silence of the elements that artrist used (as the artist wanted) as it crossed over the physical space of the artwork to craete vision without boundaries.

Avtarjeet, learned his own language and adapted it to response to his inside silence, after that he touches or moves his expression tools, it was either stone, metal, paper,paint, plants or any other material, his imagination can make a dialogue with it .

Another artist who was showing her works was Andrea Bauer in colourful oil colour paintings, her works do not differ from the woman,s products. Swhe hides in her works, inside hidden secrete, body as a ceircle does not show any toughnes, without lines or surfaces. Perhaps she hides herself behind her femininity which woman combines with the nature sometimes.

Some of her works try inter the unknown and mystery. As it seems that some psychological motivation tries to inspire the details of works, sometimes it succeeds and she succeeds in returning back to a peaceful dialogue.

Her works are not abstract as she sess , it is a reading of the hidden purposes of life, the details of her works is an indication to its unclear resources.

Vivian Bondy implemented her 20 small college works, after her pervious effort as sculptor, and for the bronze metal especialy.

She is not far from the styles of any sculptor in her colleges, if it not prmary study cases for these works, Vivian does something different, can be counted to her career. This different thing is, she took a new way of using the freedom of presentation, what helps is the verity of the matetials used in the works.

Vivian used this background towards making an artwork, which might stand between abstract and expressionism.

Though Vivian tries her best to inter the world of the painting for the sake of experiment, but there is something, wich shwo us that there is clear indication of a sculptor who was doing these works, Good design is very clear in the whole of the 20 works, as well the aesthetic dimension.

Seamus Brogan and his wonderful play with mythology, the impossible Audis journey. Seamus made his six works in different techniques. His four oil colour paintings were for the topography of the journey,s scenery.

The lost of the sailing-ship inside water, its time took the shape of colour mass (distributing colour space between the water and earth and one horizon) the small size of the main object (sailing-ship) or it is lost among colour embracing, the artist wants it as indication to the lost or scattered of Audis, or any other comtemporary Audis.

His other works seem more fantastic in its heavy mass colour. His reduced details semed swimming in its space lightly, at the same time it does not avoils its belonging to the other works . Seamus succeeded by adding a new visual language to an epic theme, which still inspiring exile questions which time does not limit it at all.

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from Universal Colours ( EU-MAN ) magazines

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ART AS ADOCUMENT

By Ali Najjar

When art becoms a document , In some how it shows the contents

of its touls , even if the document wasc about the war , war that is

a wide world , ugly and frustrated , its disrtraction influences go over mankind and nature . Such a document that deals with the works of the artists for many periods . At the begining the winner took a lot

of shares ( sculptures of Ashore Panipal of instance ) if we cross the

( wounded line ) as I see it does not defer of any kind of the Ashorian hunting sculptures .

The example of Spanish artist Goya is different , because the matter belonge to his first arising , and then to his independent well , which disputed by the spanish courts and the violence of the Franch invader , And after that what was offered by the left wing ideology to Cigaros and Picasso at the catastrophic Second World War time , though they are different in their expressionism styles .

What the Iraqi-Sweden artists Haqi Jasim tried in his latest experience is worth studding . Hi deals with the item of the hard war . His experimentation describes his wish to search about the war details , then its theory that consists by its visual encyclopedia that is not less important , and its theory .

The different is when some one trise to make a dialog or be in parallel with these visual details that helps couching the dramatic action that is in parallel with the war .

Haqi,s artworks what is collages of the fragmented memory of the war , they are as archives of the modern wars to its indications that Haqi took it from the depth of the historical action , the archeological and the sociological ones . Search as such demands a huge knowledge , that the artist has , many existential questions that viewer can find

in his works , the value of life and inhalation , civilizations and the seed of its collapse , the power of money and the classifications .

Mankind identiy as the artist sees , is tired maps , maps or topological collapsec , no difference , as the distraction indication is clear . That artist weaves selected details in his works , deteils which enriches this constructive composition , it rather not denies its style nor its archiving to the war at the same time.

The maps of Haqi , if they are real maps as thy appear for the first time , are not different than the war maps , but only in its meanings , they accuse the war on the highets level . Soft textile , full of mines , mines of the distraction of mankind , ideology and environment . Haqi is to some extent soccessful in his artwork , because he has a good bagkround of knowledge and techniques to control over a very attractive and difficult subject at same time . In his collages , Haqi did not stop to express the topic of the war , and as the space of the distraction is wide , he made desied that the installation of the 4000,000 of bipedalsm.

In its selected contents , as they are matching the idea

( the work is inspired by a hypothetical indication space ) blindness of mankind are this absent as the work shows , so it is the sin of the first generation of mankind which the collages art depends one it . Although time is changing , at the sans of civilization , but mankind follows its victim consciously or subconsciosly , as if the deserts witness his repentance behavior . The civilized –behavior starting point as the tools of Haqi do remain unstable in its selected details , cautiosly and carefully including the protest project on the act and the constrictive inhalation idiology.

The tools ( items ) of this work were not in the limit of absurd

or fantasy , but they cross over the area of the artist expressing ( installation ) to an artistic area ( conceptualism ) as in rises the questions of the exile and astonishment .

Work as such insists on the capacity of contemporary styles toward reaching the artistic message of the artist not foe the sake of aesthetics or anything alse .

If there are defenseless lags for the ancient mankind to go around deserts , he has now unbelievable tools to cross the space , but it remains unable to satisfied whith himself and his environment .

Other artist who participates actively with Haqi was the Swedish artist Dieter Engler ; his artwork-installation ( the program ) is not far from the obsession of the works of Haqi . As mankinds remain as civilized moralistic , not for conception value , and at the same time , the force of the aothority , money or any peculation as commodity does not control mankind .

Dieter built his own room as an ordinary living room , sofa , table , and television and so , between the television world and the sofa there piles of the cheep papers , mankind,s life passes an awful waiting , or opportunities that might not come at al . So , if it did come , it comes as an other routine daeth .

What Dieter look for is the balance point which the contemporary mankind relay on , chronicle successive moments through the circulation of the washing machine , in its mechanical voice which comes through a video recorded and transferred via the television.

Moments of the crowded , escape life wich hide the inside screams although it is surrounded by quietness , it steels the mankind,s life for the nothing . Loosing or self-lost , that what the artwork of Dieter about .

The mankind of Dieter is empty of his-her identity , naked in front of his-herself , in his-her search of the originality ; one can find nothing but the emptiness . And what the artist is searching for is that lost significance of mankind . Mankind who is out of these blind programmed equivalent .

The question remain legal through these works , about the rapidly advanced techonlogy which the world witness all the time , is it hiding something in its inner . Programming and machining making as to lead him-her to emptiness . So , what is wrong if mankin repeat his first behavior on different shapes .

The self-war if it right to say and the surrund does not make him far from his follow artist Haqi , the target in both cases in the defenseless mankind , but not from him-herself .

Work like these are active as it lays the huge exestential question about freedom , self searching and deep looking to life towards participating others creating better life . Towards reaching good answers which might help us continue the life that we dream about , or dream to compose it at least .

* The mutual exhibition of Dieter Engler and Haqi Jasim , UR gallery . Malmö - Sweden

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Ali Najjar : Malmö Sweden 4.8.2005

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Catching the memory .. An attempt

By Ali Najjar

Amir Khatib implements his artworks by aclear meaning ; his artworks are a mixture of an unforgettable memory , a gaining of knowledge and mixture of variable context .

To some odd extant he lived this mixture in depth , towards understanding , and then he tried to survive , sometim es in parallel line and som other times by integrating himself in fevouring its variable details , we can possibly assume saying : he is the symbol an exiled person .

Like people of his generation , he went around many Asian and European countries , carring som of these knowledge and its environmental influences , and out of these all , his works came to existence , although they are not far from his memory of his childhood . The first childhood memory in its epical dreams and its environmental context .

Spase involvement was his favourite place , not randomly , but it is sort of wider belonging , It is a suggested solution to the exile problem in its continues problem ... penetration and release , quietness and explosion , clearmess and unknoun , it is huge hole which dose not give us its secretes easily and spontaneously .

Towards catching this difficult eqoivalent , he tried limiting his assumed space by creating a space and working on discourse with it by his own special tools .

Som of Amir,s first arising ; there is this riddle of interest to research of the space . Amir was born and grew up until his youngwood in a strange city ,Al-Njjaf Al- Ashraf ; it is a strange city in every aspect , in its envvironment , its diversity of cultures and its economy . It is the world famous cultral and religious centre ,with an opened horizon . This city gave birth to one of the most important scence in the linguistics tield ; it is the language logic , which is a part of anthropological stuudies . This was during the 12^th century , and during its history the city experienced modernism as well .

Because it is sorrounded by sand , Al-Najaf Al-Ashraf built its economy and trade on the shape of the nature . These issues put its influence on the the city,s people by primitive cultural behaviour and by scentific , pragmatic and civilized behaviour too .

All of as know what is the first influence on the characters of the mankind , this , it is the environmantal genes . Later , these first genes composed the spece life project of Amir . So , there is no clearer , no puer sky , but only , his own first sky . this sky , which is of the spacios desert .

He anacts his sky by boxes or structure shapes , as the water or the gas would act , but the difference here is the Amir plying cleverly on philosophical indications .The matter on some of its elements show indicates the first womb of ours ,the wide space womb . Here we can find that Amir is trying to enter this womb throught its suggested hole to retum to his childhood ( as it is cear from the location of the hole or the gap he puts in art objects) .

A lifetime he spent uselessly trying to go deeper in its depth . He is like a poet , who doses not try to rationalize his drems by his artistic tools . While his scientific sense try rationalizing this dreams by artifiical tools that it is mixed of primitive construction material and artistic material .

Amir,s artwork ,the constructions ones ( his boxes) or his pillars always trying to combine the earth chemistry and the space elemnts or its echo , it is a rich earth of its verity , one can see the golden sand of desert pouning on the surface of Amir,s artwork , and sometimes som borrowed from som other continents .

What ever he adds or builds . it retums us to its first arising , so that his artworks are hamonized with its first elemnts . What he lost of his normal lifw time goes throught a hidden door leading to the surface of the lost time , different kind of toys speard on the surface , indications , symbols or notices which lived inside him for a long time , these all find themselves or find what is lost in a new wide quantity backing the taboo of the lost time .

Sex , (male ,female) is theme which exists in Amir,s works ; there is always a penetration , a lustful vertical hole , and an invitation for penetration . There is a crowd precipitating in the space . In the darkness of the inside and designing the outsidee surface , there are several tendencies , the differences between the oriental mystic (Sophie) erotic poem , and the pragmatic (Duniawi) erotic are little , if it is not the same .

I find these art works (boxes) as art objects , quarrelling objects by its primitive martial which the artists implemented , sometimes it is sharp , some other times acceptable like any piece decoration , but because it is meant to be art , we have to take it as it is , to put it ib its place and include it in our architectural environment . And the last attemot of Amir to cross the limited spce , Amir made a complete edifice . Temple perhaps he collects all of his techniques and his old visions to create this ( suggested temple ) of STOA .

Amir tries to follow the dream of the old astrologists on their research in the seas . It is possible to read his artwork STOA as tunnel or aperture to the spase . He built this temple clearly out of what his skills and techniques . The pillars , which are made of different martial showing tow sides , the delicateness and the toughness , by adding , carefully , the colour and the mirros . As they are long pillars like plants pushing up to the high by its concaves and promineneces .

He completed its empty space square . by a hypothetical ceiling , which is an item of his former artwork , he put it in a claver to serve his general idea . The artist puts his spacey bag as an altemativ ceiling to the space dome , or the temple dome , which is a hole , or a skay ceiling . By spreading his own things ( one can say own symbols ) to an adequate high .

This artwork of STOA played a dual role . It is an earthy temple , by what it indicates of a clear architecture and the broken mirror on it , they are fragments of mankind faces , so that mirrors are important elemnts of the demounting oriental temple architect . So the magical endless reflexes of the light compose a link of many orientalization links .

He plays on the physical space and the telepathy space as well . As much as the space touches the surrounding of the pillars they keep the relatively limit of freedom to keep their idipendence as separate parts .

This fastened axil finds its outlet in the ceiling hole response with the huge outside space , and the colour of the pillars lead us to think obout michaniqual cement civilzation and dedicates the work stronly in its contrasts ( the heritage and modemism ) this contrast or this cmposition is a part of the contemporary message .

Last but not least i find that Amir could successfuly combine several environmental influences . Nordic and southem in all what he used ; his colours ; his material and his using to the theme . In other word one can say that Amir has turnied his personal carrer to a carrer of a wide rang artworks , which is not far from similar masters experiences , which try to read what is happening on the map of the cultural life of the world by a variety of tools .

ALI NAJJAR SWEEDEN / 23-10-2003

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Mohamed Frady

By: Mohamed Frady

The chest is apiece of furniture in farmer houses in my country. Common people decorate the front of it by decorative paintings. They express their thought through these paintings.

I take a wde care about the subject. I offerds it in modern style: I made an academic research to write heritage.

My following work contain these thought as:

1- Shape- it taks from the front of the chest.

2- Vocabularies: painting about plants and animals which taken from the country side life represented by the date palms, flowers, the leaves of the tree and animals:

2000

For last thirty , I consider landscape as a window; I can open it occasionally to interact with places and environments. Here, in U.S.A. I have been stimulated by the diversity of geography so I painted some pictures depend on (open scene) which contain the whole details of the city.

2001

Earth union is the theme of this exhibition. I would like you to observe how to look at earth.

EARTH IS ONE.

PEOPLE ARE ONE,

FEELINGS FOR EARTH ARE ONE,

ALL OF US LOVE EARTH.

There are a lot of reasons why we love earth?

My works in this exhibit express my love for earth.

2002

I discover myself in my drawings, paintings, sculptures, as well as my writing. Every minute I am in search of a new subject. At the same time I am busy working on four to five projects like; books on people, figures in chairs, voice of piece, Iraqi woman in black robe, contemporary eve, and many others. When I become overwhelmed with my project I take refuge in landscape. When landscape doesn’t sooth me or when I become homesick I search my memories for my most meaningful experiences. When I feel isolated from my world, I go to a white canvas. This white canvas reflects how I feel inside and it never opposes me.

2004 New York

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