Selma Roth Saudi Gazette JEDDAH – Ayyam Gallery on Tuesday (Nov. 26) launched its new exhibition, ‘Godot to come yesterday' by Iraqi artist Sadik Alfraji. The opening was attended by a smaller number of visitors than it usually attracts, and that is not strange given the effort it takes to grasp the meaning of Alfraji's art as well as the strong melancholic feelings visitors will be subjected to when contemplating his works. Indeed, Alfraji's art can be described as ‘melancholic existentialism', a quest to find the purpose in life as well as a longing to feeling home. For an artist living in exile, this nostalgia is very concrete. The artist left his home country in the early 1990s and currently lives and works in Amersfoort, The Netherlands. His work blends art and philosophy in conceptual work that mixes various media compositions and designs. Sociopolitical as well as personal memories, including the Iran-Iraq War and the loss of his father, further strengthen the artist's gloomy vision of the world. The exhibition in Jeddah is inspired by Samuel Beckett's famous existentialist and absurdist play ‘Waiting for Godot' (1952). In the tragicomedy, two characters wait for a third character, Godot, which never arrives. Godot is often explained as being the meaning of human existence and an ever unpunctual deity, but for Alfraji Godot “is something which I believe exists inside me”, although he is “not able to comprehend or visualize” it. On the other hand, Alfraji believes that Godot is “what I long to be” and that “Godot was I when I could fly. He is the freedom that I do not possess the way I like, other than in my mind.” For an artist living in exile, this feeling of lack of freedom is not surprising. But his vision about freedom is not restricted to himself alone. Instead, he questions that any of us is free. In an interview with Rima Chahrour for ‘In The Frame', an organization that promotes Iraqi contemporary art, he said that he himself is Godot, the impossible. “It refers to a period of freedom which is essentially childhood, when the world was smooth and I could fly like an angel.” Hence the exhibition's name ‘Godot to come yesterday'. Alfraji presents Godot as an almost faceless and shadowy figure, using Indian ink, charcoal, rice paper and oil on canvas. The black color ads to this idea that Godot is but a shadow of our existence: “Black's engulfing qualities makes it one of the best colors to work with, as it is powerful and effective in expressing and forming ideas and concepts. The color can emphasize its subject and is malleable, lending itself to symbolic meaning, just like a shadow that can take on all possibilities of shapes of matter,” the artist explained during an interview in March 2013 with Designboom, a digital architecture and design magazine. However, the artist does not limit himself to one medium. His video installation “The House that My Father Built” perhaps needs less explanation than his images of Godot. The video draws on Alfraji's personal experience of returning to Iraq following his father's death and finding his family home exactly the way his father left it when he passed away. The house, Alfraji explained later, does not necessarily refer to a house, but is rather a metaphor of identity. In this artwork again, he expresses the nostalgia he feels with respect to his childhood in Iraq, when everything seemed perfect. Filled with childhood memories that shaped his identity and despite the fact that he finds the house as if his father was still living there, the artist also realizes that those are just memories that will never return but that have simultaneously become part of us and made us who we are, thus making us “both the story and the storyteller”. Sadik Alfraji's exhibition ‘Godot to come yesterday' can be seen at Ayyam Gallery until January 9, 2014. Ayyam Gallery Jeddah is located on the third floor of the Bougainvillea Center, Gate 2, King Road. It is opened from Saturday to Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
