Galerie Claude Lemand

THE BIRDS in the Art of DIA AL-AZZAWI.
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Claude Lemand

The bird is a fun­da­mental and recur­ring theme in Dia al-Azzawi’s œuvre, espe­cially in works dating from 1975, the year before his vol­un­tary exile from Iraq. After this, the bird appears in his work as an emi­grant (Emigration, 1976; The Travel, 1979), a wit­ness of mar­tyrdom (The Body’s Anthem, 1978; We Are Not Seen, But [As] Corpses: The Massacre of Sabra and Shatila Camps, 1983), as well as a symbol of peace and faithful love (Facing His Dove, 1978).

Away from his home­land, Azzawi’s cul­ture recalls images and sto­ries from Mesopotamian mythology and arte­facts, and also from the folk­loric Iraqi tales and tra­di­tions that he col­lected from rural and Bedouin com­mu­ni­ties during his for­ma­tive years, par­tic­u­larly when working in museums across Iraq. He is not only inspired by birds in Sufi poetry (The Conference of the Birds by Farid al-Din al-‘Attar) but also from great con­tem­po­rary poets (such as Amal Dunqul and Claude Aveline).

The London-based Iraqi artist has pro­duced a number of paint­ings, draw­ings, sculp­tures, books and engrav­ings in which birds fea­ture as mes­sen­gers for peace, emi­grants or wit­nesses to the mas­sacres of civil­ians in Palestine and Iraq. In 1981, the artist par­tic­i­pated in the Basel Art Fair with an unfor­get­table exhi­bi­tion show­casing sev­eral paint­ings whose sole sub­ject matter was the bird: Red Sky with Birds, Sleeping Bird, 1981; and espe­cially Voyage Nos 1 and 2, the latter being a large trip­tych mea­suring 120 x 260 cm.

The fore­word to the 1981 exhi­bi­tion cat­a­logue was written by the artist Corneille, who describes:
“… The can­vases of the painter Azzawi form a lush oasis… A white bird del­i­cately out­lined, like a leaf held against the light from a window, peace­fully flies through the blue sky. A vibrant blue cloud awaits it (…)
Yet, like a sharp reminder of today’s reality, birds appear, tat­tered, torn, one of them falling with wings ver­ti­cally out­stretched, like a wounded aero­plane: Red Sky with Birds. After a very hot day, the sky has sud­denly burst into flames. Birds fly fran­ti­cally across it, seeking the velvet black­ness of a dis­tant, becalmed night. The strength ema­nating from this recent dip­tych is cre­ated by the con­trast of the expanse of black with the vivid, glowing red that answers it. …
For anyone who looks at the artist’s paint­ings, the bril­liance and beauty of his colours are not just invi­ta­tions to visual enjoy­ment. Behind the archi­tec­ture of forms and colours with their rhythmic and musical res­o­nances hides a man who speaks of his country – or, rather, sings of it. Our eyes must listen.”
(Corneille, Encounters with the works of Dia Azzawi, Paris, 1981.)

In 2004 and 2005, Dia al-Azzawi painted around forty doves based on Claude Aveline’s poem The Non-Existent Bird, 1950. Using mul­tiple bright colours and varying forms, according to the seven lan­guages of the poem that he repro­duced in his artist’s book of the same name (2005), Azzawi’s paint­ings are an expres­sion of emo­tions, sen­sa­tions and pos­i­tive feel­ings that he attributed to them (such as freedom, health, joy, pride, pas­sion, seduc­tion, reflec­tion, etc.).