AMMAN - Nedim Kufi has much to tell. He is an artist with a message wrapped in symbols, an Iraqi who fled to the Netherlands to ply his art and life pursuits but who still feels involved in his people’s plight. If he doesn’t politicise his work, it is because he is an artist. But behind his clearly articulated thought there is a wealth of feelings and cryptic meanings that talk of the universal values of humanity, choosing to ignore the painful present but not forgetting the past. Kufi’s calm, physical presence fills the space, perfectly matching the ideas he projects in his works, which reveal a quest for truths, humanity and deep-rooted memories of a destroyed civilisation played havoc with by the more primitive among us, ignorant people whose egocentric universe dictates actions with no concern for outcome. Rising above painful mundane concerns, Kufi, an artist no matter what, goes about creating works of universal values, raising awareness, drawing attention, delving into his and humanity’s concerns, and, in the process, coming up with fine images of great symbolism, delicate artistry and philosophical depth. He uses pigments, sometimes henna, and natural material, “believing in the concept of being and dealing with nature”, which distances him “from other artists”. Kufi considers himself more of an “attar”, a vendor of herbs, spices and smells, than an artist, a chemist of sorts who, nevertheless, tries to make his work “minimum, direct and simple”. “Less,” says Kufi, who never ceases to experiment. “Recently I tried to deal with water and oil because each resists the other. It was good to paint on really wet canvas, ‘bathroom of painting’, with oil because of this. The communication between me and the canvas was perfect in this case.” Kufi believes that the word painting comes from pain. ”

“If pain made painting, or the other way around, it would have a much more powerful result. Pain is part of the process - struggling, challenging, healing, most of the time.” Healing must be sought by most Iraqis who fled their war-torn country. For, hatred and bloodshed replaced other feelings in the heart of many of these people descending from ancient civilisations. The works Kufi displays at Lines, contemporary art gallery, have as a starting point experimenting with candlelight. “Modelling for hope”, he calls his painting for which he spent three weeks in the company of a flickering candle “sometimes more sensitive than human beings”, a wavering light that could be put off so easily by a light breeze, but that “will feed you back”.

people always need a conclusion
painting does that:
gives that last moment, the last word’

Not satisfied with two-dimensional representations, the artist fights “with the shape, line, colour, to achieve 3-D objects. With this flame I almost succeeded”. Thus, on a pitch black background, the sparkling flame of intense yellow opens the space like the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, inviting a glimpse yet unveiling little. The wick, sooty black and giving life to the candle, is projected like a human silhouette against the yellow background, a being braving the space and the unknown to reach somewhere – a futile attempt as its life will soon come to an end and with it, the candle and the light. But Kufi goes farther than this symbolic light-darkness dichotomy; he has other deep preoccupations. One worry is that books will be soon replaced by computers. No more the

smell of freshly printed paper that you can cradle in your hands, he is afraid, and as such, he tries to remind the viewer of these precious objects which tend to become obsolete. The “Blank book”, the outline of a dark-red spine and red-rimmed pages covered by layers of flowery and plain fabric, makes one wonder whether it is indeed blank. The idea, however, is that books have to be preserved, like his “Mummified book”, again layers of canvas that veil the images under, wrapping them like mummies, but also like a chrysalis awaiting the right moment to come back to life, transformed, more beautiful and attractive. Kufi’s works are full of symbolism. He makes further statements, unhappy with the fact that “these days, everybody reads on screen, no more on paper”. He wants to remind that the book is a friend; in his works, it is an object in itself. Thus besides his blank and mummified books, there is also his “Travel journal”, whose light brown cover invites reading about people, mysteries to be uncovered and places to be seen, and “Makhtuta” (manuscript), a deep shade of green with an ochre band framing it, suggesting an old, long-forgotten
copy, over which dry rose buds have been strewn (like petals among pages), awaiting to be rediscovered,
dusted and read again. The artist looks at his works as stills from movies. “People always need a conclusion. Painting does that: gives that last moment, the last word.”
“Paint is a frame from a movie [middle, end, somewhere]. A few years ago, it was difficult for me to select one frame from one movie. Maybe it was a wrong choice, but a good exercise. “Naqd”, a 1974 coin stencilled six times on canvas the colour of old paintings, immediately anchors the artist in the soil of his country. Tall, slender palm trees yielding dates and a few antique columns are framed in a scalloped circular frame.”

The coin keeps alive (just like a book) memories of vanished good time. Because memory games are frequent in his works, Kufi delves into notions of time, remembering and forgetting. In his “To remember, to forget”, two hard canvases side by side are as contrasting as the ideas they project. One dark-brown henna work is lively, crowded, in movement, with embossed dark ochre dots seeming to dart around, congregating, separating, punctuating the canvas - all above a lacy rendition of a crown. It is a place where things are happening, that makes one remember, as opposed to the yellow square on the next canvas, the blank forgetfulness that is devoid of life and movement. In a humorous twist, however, and following the theme, the artist uses yellow for the “forgetting” space, the colour that is used to remind. To remind viewers to remember, perhaps? The turquoise and beige “Sky sieve” and “Earth sieve” are ingenious installations of canvases hanging down away from the wall. Random holes puncture them, allowing through different colour light projected by layers of canvas behind, lit by lamps. They offer a magnificent star-studded landscape and more wondering about what lies behind. Such mystery persists in the “Windows”, which immediately dispel the hope of offering a glimpse at what is beyond their frames. The six larger square openings framed by many nu ances of claret, beige and green ink, overlook the white wall behind, leaving it to the viewer’s imagination to populate that blank space with imagery and life. A few more abstract images
are proof of the artist’s experimenting with colour, shape and technique. In “Literally soap”, the cleaning bar is used as an object, just near a painted rendition of it. “I painted it in a kitsch way to [enable to] smell it, feel the atmosphere in a different approach. What interests me is the experiment, not the result, because how I did, must be forgotten in my mind.I try to clean. Sometimes I feel that to forget is the main target.” For sure he will not want his works easily forgotten.
And they cannot be.