AMMAN — Pioneer Jordanian artist Yasser Dwaik is celebrating his 50-year career with a retrospective exhibition in Amman showcasing works from all periods of his multifaceted production.
With organisers stressing Dwaik’s role in laying the foundation for the blossoming of art in Jordan, the artist said he was constantly searching for the next inspiration, noting that, following Dutch artist Rembrandt’s beliefs: “All my works are a personal photo of me.”
“I still recall my suffering in search of art tools and materials in the middle of the libraries of Jerusalem as a child. Even there, it was extremely difficult to get art books and materials,” Dwaik told The Jordan Times in a recent interview.
“One day, when I was about 13, I even sent a letter to a shop in Egypt asking how to use charcoals. I had to learn how to do everything by myself. It was very hard but I was highly motivated.”
Starting with painting, and having grown confident with the use of colours, Dwaik started drawing Jerusalem’s alleys, arches, minarets, bells, people and markets which influenced his first paintings and photography and his handling of water and oil colours.
The shock of the Israeli occupation of what was left of the Palestinian land in 1967 caused a transition in the way he handled art forms, Dwaik noted, adding that from that moment, the topics he presented were mostly a challenge to the sad circumstances in his surroundings.
The state of Israel was established on Palestinian land after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and later expanded illegally in the wake of the 1967 Middle East war, occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and annexing East Jerusalem as part of its capital, a move never recognised at an international level.
Following this event, Dwaik, like many other Palestinians, left Jerusalem and found sanctuary in Jordan.
“I used to make references in my work, in my paintings especially, to the landscape and the place I lived in,” he said.
“I painted ruins in many backgrounds, but they were always stylised and in combination with circles, representing the sun or the moon — signs of hope. There were often trees before those ruins with light gleefully coming through their leaves.”
After travelling to Europe and completing his studies in Baghdad, Dwaik became acquainted with graphics and printing that made his work more abstract, with geometric shapes gradually taking over the former figurative style.
“My experience with graphics and its multiple techniques and methods had a great impact in achieving an expressive vision of spiritual symbols reflecting my feelings and senses towards the course of the world’s events,” Dwaik said.
“The aim of the exhibition ‘50 years in Art’ is to point out all the different sides of a life’s work,” Mohammad Jaloos, curator at the Cairo Amman Bank art gallery, the exhibition’s venue, told The Jordan Times.
The artist’s eclectic approach to art has made his work span from graphics to paintings and etching, leading him to work with all kinds of materials, he said.
As one of the founders of the Jordanian Plastic Artist Association in the late 1970s, the main representative institution of the fine arts in the Kingdom, Dwaik has also dedicated a large part of his career to supporting art education in the Kingdom, Jaloos added.
“Back then, we were a small group of artists working together and supporting each other. Today, I am happy that more and more students are joining my classes at the University of Jordan and have a perfect knowledge of art and come up with their own original ideas,” Dwaik said.
Looking at his latest work hanging on the gallery’s walls characterised by abstract patchworks of different materials and covered with enamel, the 73-year-old artist said his production has always been, and will always be, in constant evolution.
“I am an artist; therefore, I need to constantly think in different ways, looking at things from a different perspective and employing new techniques. I always look for new styles, subjects, materials and keep changing them all the time. My work changes every time as my feelings do.”
