Islam Zaher
Contemporary Egyptian Artist
"I have always been inspired by the existential contradictions that represent the gap between what we really are and what we wish to be … these little gaps and holes that absorb us piece by piece until entrapping us inside … thus, the overall view of the world starts to dissolve."
ISLAM ZAHER
OUT OF VACCUM
APRIL, 2005
The show was based on three major themes, modeled on the images of: Dogs, human figures, a portrait in a funeral state & the iconic erotic ritual.
These three themes embody visions out of the dark terrain of the human consciousness. That grotesque terrain where the explanations and definitions of the existences and its images have been removed away.
These three themes came out of a personal motive which is my interest in representing images out of our realistic world -as we know it- with explanations and definitions removed that were imposed by different systems which reign this (conscious) world- including the personal opinions of the artist himself – under the commitment of the realistic value of these images itself avoiding the insertion of the Metaphysics atmosphere like Surrealism. Therefore the viewer can meet the artworks in a neutral space void of the commitments of known symbols.
A space where the realistic level ranges from representation, to imitation to description, leaving fields for the viewer to build a real, personal relationship with the artwork, not being guided from related symbols.
Of course I know that such kind of ambition which puts the viewer in a vacuum, that voids the common tools of artworks analyzing –like reading the instructions on the back – may push some to accuse the works of obscurity or the intention of being mysterious. But I think that the intellectual vigor which comes out of this paradox however, was the result in the main ambition of any artwork.
ISLAM ZAHER 2005
INTUITED HAPPINESS
MAY, 2010
It all started when the landlord decided to apply the new rental system to his newly vacant apartments, thus swamping the building with all sorts of new tenants.
There was nothing particularly out of the ordinary, except for the loud voices emanating from her apartment (awful songs, and quarrels sometimes) which was a constant source of the regular tenants’ complaints (namely women).
Whenever I chanced upon her, I didn’t notice anything other than the higab enveloping this plump figure…she was indeed ordinary, but the words of the women of the building about her behavior and her associations with men frequenting her apartment—claiming that her "husband" was among them—these words stripped her veiled presence to the point where she became the coveted object of janitors and workshop boys who, as rumored, intentionally keep their workshops open till late at night in order to have a peek at her returning home…around dawn.
My mother lifted her head while placing her finger over Koran verse that she stopped at and with her other hand took off her glasses and asked me:
- What does "Riklam" mean?
They say that she works at a "Nightclub," but isn’t a "Belly dancer"… what is this "Riklam"?
The dawn call to prayer had just started when I saw her returning, her hurried footsteps devoured by the hungry eyes of workshop boys whose workshops were filled with the sound of late night radios transmitting entangled verses describing the path to happiness in this life and in the afterlife…while she quietly made her way towards the shelter of home…veiled…hunted…drunk… (in most cases).
ISLAM ZAHER 2010
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PINK AND LAMENATION
MARCH, 2015
I do not know why the "pink Salamander" comes to my mind when I watch the photos of her engagement party. I was just a child when I first read this strange information about the "Salamander". It seemed so alien to me back then... What is this "Salamander"?! Why is it (pink)?
The informative photo book talked very briefly about the "Salamander". It evolved on land, but at some point -- for no apparent reason -- it decided to go to deep waters and live in the cold darkness. In the deep, the darkness had the last word and thus, the eyes of the poor Salamander were rendered obsolete and subsequently erased without a trace. It grew gills instead of nostrils and delicate fins instead of fingers… Now, adaptability had the last word over the life of the Salamander in the deep!
Her obsession with the details of the dress, which she made with desperate sincerity in preparation for the ceremony launching her to a new life, revealed a rooted suspicion that searched for a lost path to a sick happiness…
The dress was pink and so were the walls of the house. They were as pink as the plastic flowers she held so keenly. Even her head veil was pink. Its pink challenged the pinkness of the dress, which covered her entire existence (with the exception of the face and hands)… Now, pink had the last word!
As the poor Salamander stumbled in its blindness through the humid deep, she strolled in her dress amid this cold darkness of pink with a surrendered pale smile onto her lips.
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ISLAM ZAHER 2015
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REMNANTS OF ENCHANTMENT
April-May 2017
For Zaher, “Remnants of Enchantment” started with an imprinted memory of a neglected sculpting studio to which he would escape as a student of painting - where ambition and longing advanced in existential cycles. The nihilistic mood of the space, of unfinished sculpture, dusty props and broken furniture, and certain people who frequented the workshop form the basis for his oil paintings and charcoal drawings. Traces of futile labor and ludicrous desire are rendered in uneven brush strokes and careful layering. Zaher’s bodily motion in the process of painting wrestles to make a socio-psychological state of existence transpire through a medium that is as hard to contain as the ambition it attempts to express.
PASSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS
March 2020
Strangers passing in the street
By chance two separate glances meet
And I am you and what I see is me
And do I take you by the hand
And lead you through the land
And help me understand
The best I can
And no one called us to the land
And no one crosses there alive
No one speaks and no one tries
No one flies around the sun.
These were the lyrics of Echoes, a song by the British Rock band, Pink Floyd. The lyrics hit my heard hard. The smooth music flowed and wrapped the scene in front of me with its striking melancholy that attracts feelings of desolation and alienation, pouring these feelings in a touching crescendo. The song was part of the video of Live at Pompeii1, which documented a concert by the band in the Roman amphitheater in Pompeii2. For year, throughout my route from the cafe to my house, this song and the scenes of the documentary, which explored the catastrophe of the antique city and the bodies of its residents who were mummified by unexpected volcano dust and lava with their horrified eyes, crossed arms in front of their faces that desperately tried to prevent the inevitable, and calcified statue-like figures, immediately brought to my mind religious stories about the fate of rogue nations!
The song's lyrics and its music with the exceptional footage of the old city and its distressed residents continued to cover the scenes of the usual night return journey. The visions pictured in the film mixed with scenes of the road ... streets without names and an unrelenting absurd struggle between demolition and construction, as government departments represented by localities chased unlicensed buildings that violated building codes either in height or protrusions, chasing them by demolishing the violating floors. The result is a deformed crosslinked mixture of randomly designed buildings with concrete columns and shattered concrete beams that protrude from them and are crowned with iron fences. Moths and gaps penetrate the walls of red or concrete bricks to form dilapidated rooms similar to the burrows of small animals. The struggle between demolition and reconstruction might intensify until it reaches the degree that these buildings can be inhabited before the construction is completed. Gray and featureless people crawl inside as if the inhabitants catch the infection of incompletion from the building!
I used to walk every night between these buildings, which are unevenly stacked like the irregular breaths of lung patients. Meanwhile, my mind continues to reproduce these scenes that depict the residents of these stricken buildings as if some day, they will also be excavated by someone explorers who will fig them up and picture them their burrows with their scarce furniture, mummified by bursts of concrete deposits, and penetrated by iron skewers like fossilized flesh while faces that lost all features and the burden of expression for so long... until they turned into vague statues depicting nothing.
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ISLAM ZAHER 2020
THE SHADOW OF ABSENCE
November 2023
Perhaps liberation from the captivity of the subject or the literary context of the painting was one of the basic aspirations of many artists throughout the ages as one of the relentless endeavors towards a greater goal, which is to reach higher degrees of purity and privacy in the art of painting. Historically, Surrealism took precedence in this regard, but more private and unique attempts preceded surrealism, which turned that ambition into a mere (pattern)!
Goya's controversial group series (Pinturas negras), which is composed of fourteen works of various sizes - executed by Goya in the last years of his life (from 1819 to 1823) - probably constitutes one of the most private and distinctive of these endeavors.
He painted these works on the walls of the dining and sitting rooms in his house known as (Quinta del Sordo) "the house of the deaf man", the paintings were not commissioned by anyone, and it is clear that Goya did not intend to display or sell these paintings. Rather, he drew it for himself, addressing those hidden and dark areas of human consciousness, in which images and scenes of obscure obsessions and fears accumulate! There, the images of beings change and their clear connotations are absent, as they are in the conscious world, which is clearly presented in the entire literary production of "Kafka", especially in his famous novel "The Transformation" (Die Verwandlung), or as an independent subject, as did "Goya". Thus, Goya did not give any titles to his black paintings. The paintings were later titled by art historians. This lent these works an air of freedom from the restrictions of workmanship and (the prevailing). Despite the clear dramatic touch and violent psychological nature of the entire series, the absence of context linking the scenes addressed in the paintings, which mostly depict the artist's personal concerns, remained the distinguishing feature of the series. This represents a unique artistic ambition that always attracts attempts to re-read and interpret it... This show is an attempt to get close and meet personally with this ambition.
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ISLAM ZAHER 2023