Talk about being worth the wait. The Dia al-Azzawi retrospective is so enormous and compelling that despite being split between two venues spanning 9,000 sq metres of space — Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, and Al Riwaq — and displaying more than 500 works spanning 50 years of the art and life of one of Iraq’s most influential living artists, you would find yourself longing for more.
Internationally recognised as one of the pioneers of modern Arab art, al-Azzawi’s exhibition packed with a variety of media including painting, sculpture, prints, drawings, and book art, and titled I am the cry, who will give voice to me? Dia Al-Azzawi: A Retrospective (from 1963 until tomorrow), will run until April 16, 2017. Community sat down with the inimitable artist for a chat.
Tell us about your artistic association with Qatar…
When I started coming to Doha from the beginning of the ’90s, I met Sheikh Hassan bin Mohamed bin Ali al-Thani, who, then, was planning to build a collection of modern and contemporary Arab art. For that purpose, I started visiting Doha often. I liked the weather and the beautiful sun, and I worked in my studio here. To be working between London and Doha kept me in direct contact with Arab art or the Arab movement. It was also a great opportunity to escape the dullness of London when it’s cold and gloomy there. This is one of the works I created when I was here in Doha in 1995-96, and it’s called Western Bird. In my paint­ings, the bird stands for freedom, trav­el­ling and exile. This piece holds an indirect relation with my idea to go back to my country. Since I left Iraq in 1976, I travelled a lot between London and other Arab countries. I tried to keep my contact by having exhibitions in Arab countries. It was a way of keeping contact. I am not the one to immigrate and cut off my roots. I left Iraq at an age when I had gathered a lot of memories of my homeland and the Arab countries that I was in direct contact with. This helped me enrich my visual sense and my approach towards art. Once, a journalist here asked me, ‘From where do you source all these colours into your painting, because what we have around us is rather dull. I told him that the colours are all part of my memory. I am from a country that, normally, has a fantastic life to offer. Also, because of my contact with Doha and the many travels kept that sense of life alive, which is very important to any artist.

Art has often merged with politics in your work. You have created art in response to the collapse of the Palestine liberation movement (1970), your experience during your last service in 1973 on the Kurdistan war front, the Gulf War in 1991, and to the American invasion of 2003, among others things. Why do you feel the need to respond to such incidences?
That’s because it’s a moral stand any intellectual has to take if he or she wants to be part of what’s going on. You cannot be neutral when your society is being completely destroyed. I’m from a generation which is obsessed with the Palestinian cause. For me, it’s about the injustice that the Palestinians have suffered. You have people till now living in camps despite having homes. Moreover, I have many Palestinian friends. At the same time, Iraq is my country. Although I have been out of it for more than 30 years, it doesn’t mean that I am outside of it or have deserted it as I still have part of my family and my friends there. When my country’s going through destruction, there’s no way I can keep my mouth shut. I have to raise my voice against the inhuman treatment meted out to Iraqis and the inhuman conditions created by the bad policies of the West by giving away the power to Islamic parties, and giving rise to the mentality of violence and infighting. For me, this is not usual. When I lived in Iraq during the ’60s and the ’70s, it was a very normal country. I didn’t know if my friend was Muslim, Christian, Shia or Sunni. That’s the right sort of society to be in. Now you have this sectarian mindset in every aspect of what’s going on in Iraq.

When you moved to London 40 years ago, you have said that it gave you a refreshing perspective on Iraq and also its art. In what way did your move shape your ideas?
The difference between living in Baghdad with limited contact with other art movements, and living in London, a centre of worldwide arts and a variety of movements and expressions, is huge. Once, in the beginning of the ’80s, I saw a painting in Tate by an English artist. It was a very large, beautiful and colourful painting, and its composition relied on Arabic calligraphy and the name Mohammad. So I started asking myself — Is this painting an ‘Arab painting’? At the same time, it made me realise that any artist who tries to be different and uses references without imitation is perhaps trying to explore new territories. That also is a parallel to what Picasso did when he used primitive masks from Africa in his works. Sumerian or Assyrian art doesn’t belong to Iraq, for instance, but to everybody. This is what I understood when I started living in Europe. When I was in Iraq, we would talk very loudly and proudly about our culture and our civilisation, which is great, but in reality, it’s not ours; it belongs to everybody. That also has made me ask myself how different can I be — should I make direct references to my culture, or try to create a painting which speaks from inside? We know that the tradition of painting is very European, and it’s not to do with our civilisation. This is something which is very hard to put together, by including some element and create a style that belongs to you but it’s a way of accumulation of your vision.

Quite some of your works speak about your friends who went missing or died. How necessary was it to you, as an artist, to express your sorrow through your works?
Here, at Al Riwaq, you will see a large sculpture of Handala, the iconic 10-year-old child that was the brainchild of Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali (standing as a symbol for the Palestinian refugees expelled or forced to flee from their homes). The cartoonist was said to have been killed by ‘unknown’ people. But it’s not unknown. We know. Those who did that were part of the establishment who couldn’t stand his criticism. In a way, this piece is a tribute to this person, reminding all intellectuals that there is a red line that you cannot cross despite whatever freedoms your governments promise you. At the same time, you have to take a moral stand and not accept something that’s wrong. If you want to fulfil your belief, you must have the strength to say no when there’s something wrong.

Stretching across two venues, your retrospective exhibition is positively overwhelming. How do you find it?
It’s a great privilege for any artist to have an exhibition of this scale and size. It is also an opportunity to examine himself and see how well he could challenge himself to do something more creative. I am privileged to have this retrospective exhibition and to work with curator Catherine David, who is very well-known internationally. Also, I am privileged to have the exhibition done in a very professional way that is no different than any museum in Europe.
You cannot find the quality of presentation that you have here in Doha, anywhere in the Middle East; not now, not even in the near future. This shows how deep a role Doha can play in the process of supporting Arab art and help Arab artists to have their work documented and stored.