WORK BY KADHIM AL-KHALIFA
Most of the original artwork featured on this page is for sale. There is a limited edition of signed prints in the 'Wardrafts' series available (see below).
Please contact Kadhim if you wish to make enquiries about any of the work:
ABOUT THE PARALLEL WORKS
I place, between myself and an event, a distance that allows me to interact with the matter from an artistic perspective. That is what I mean by “parallel”.
The event, be it historical, such as a war, or resulting from personal experience, always remains one of the givens of reality, as art can only address it or react to it with another event or creative reality which supersedes it. But that which is emotional and psychological, political and ideological or affiliated with other human values and dimensions, is before all else either inherent in art, or absorbed by it. The role of the artist lies in harnessing these dimensions and their repercussions and subjugating them to the surface of the painting in an aesthetic form.
I make these claims from a cultural perspective (my position in art), a standpoint I have often exercised and have adhered to as a point of departure for my work. But of what use are these assertions when I stand powerless in Iraq, after 25 years, watching the devastation wreaked by three qualitative wars? Or of what use is it at a moment of despair, when it’s pain sears the soul, a sensation incomparable to any form of torture other than the pain of losing one’s mind?
I say all this from my standpoint that carries through into these exhibits, from whence I still put my stake on the hope and promise of art, even if it is hope and promise tainted by despair.
Deathfence
Mixed media and acrylic on canvas
Detail:
Parallel Falling of the Statue
150cm x 150cm
Acrylic on canvas
Parallel with an Event
5m x 2m
Mixed media and acrylic on canvas
Forthcoming War
Mixed media and ink on paper
WAR DRAFTS
This is part of what I was doing during the war, when Iraq was going through an apocalyptic fate. I needed to look at these works again, I wanted to see them one more time exposed to new surfaces, subjected to wider technical skills, that is why I kept postponing the moment when they would be exhibited.
Now that the war has fulfilled its meaning, these sketches stare at my eyes in their naked reality; they are forms, elements and techniques that exist on their own, because they are just there, they are dense and they have already gone through a lot.
The following are all A4
Ink and mixed media on paper.
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