isqineeha: The House that My Father Built (2010) ذلك البيت الذي بناه أبي Iraqi Artist SADIK KW
isqineeha: The House that My Father Built (2010) ذلك البيت الذي بناه أبي Iraqi Artist SADIK KWAISH ALFRAJI صادق كويش الفراجي In this project of paintings, short videos, and installations Sadik Kwaish Alfraji recalls one of the most devastating and emotional events in his life; the passing of his father. Having not been to Baghdad in 20 years, Sadik’s first return to the country and his hometown coincided with the death of his father; an experience that not only made him fully realize the role the diaspora plays in the shaping of his personality, but also one that generated an existential conflict between life and death within his awareness. The aspect of the project emphasized here features this massive 6.2 x 4 meter black figure painting titled “Once Upon a Time“ that is seen leaning and trying to reach the photograph and traditional dress situated beneath it. On the massive scale of such figures, he writes: My intention was to decenter the viewer’s ego by dwarfing him, and reminding him that we are stories that play out for a short while and afterward disappear forever. Furthermore, the projection should be big and it should fill the entire wall, because that moment of existential awareness that I allude to is intense. Because it’s an awareness that is so total that it’s the only thing you can see. (x) The photographs are those of his father and mother that were taken in Baghdad in 1982. The significance of the dress, ghotra, and agal become extremely sentimental when the viewer realizes that these were the same elements Sadik Alfraji laid his eyes upon when he first visited his parents house after all of those years living in diaspora; those were the elements that had stuck in his memory over the years, which not only held a physical relevance but were also part of his fathers identity: They were hanging there, high, tidy and clean, as always, ready to be worn, exactly as he used to hang them himself. They were levelled upright on the wall surrounded by lost ghosts and floating shadows, restless and anxious, pacing the room, swaying on the beat of his strong, deep voice which filled the room, together with the smell of fresh roasted coffee and the tunes of old sad Mawaweels. (x) Another aspect of this project stems from the title itself, with the important significance of the house being built by the artists father, and thus holding a very personal sentimental value for the family as a whole, which surpasses the physical aspect of residence and survival, and emphasizes the development of ones memory and personhood over time prior, throughout, and post the building process in relation to the home itself. Its transition from a house to a home. -- source link