Looking Through Walls - The Timeless Tahir Fatah

Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net

The primeval

Tahir Fatah left Iraq as a passionate young Kurdish artist during the political turbulence of the sixties and arrived in the US, spurred on as he confided, “by an artist’s restlessness.” Now silver-haired but youthful, his vision matured, and universality confirmed, he expounded upon the motivation that had shaped his career as a painter while still allowing him to maintain a practical livelihood as a scenic artist for America’s NBC television.

“As a child I felt as if a lid had been put upon me – later, this feeling became identified with a need to go somewhere, to go beyond Islamic culture, to be somewhere less structured. I had no words for it at the time, but my only choice was to go, to leave Iraq. ‘Art’ was in me as a child. I was devoted to it even though I had no materials and used to paint with stones and clay. I did well in other subjects at school but had trouble with religious studies. I never quite comprehended what it was all about but was forced to attend the mosque. There I was threatened and even suffered beating if I made mistakes. I was sent off to the Quranic school instead of having weekends and holidays and was made to memorise things I didn’t understand. The mullahs had a habit of beating the kids with wet sticks. I was once beaten unconscious by the mullah and had to stay in bed for three months. For a sensitive child this was as good as poison. It turned me against religion for good…”

Religious themes still haunt Taher’s paintings today; supplicant figures, their long-fingered hands reaching out in prayer and their heads merging with the eternal darkness loom from giant canvases around us in his studio, their bodies splotched with ‘holy spots’ as Tahir labels them irreverently.

The religious paintings are set up like a “historical time-machine”, he explained, “playing with certain aspects of the human being. These paintings are stylised like cave paintings, primal, with no technically elevated order, no Renaissance vision, but connected to feelings like part of me speaking to modern time from our essential primacy with a yearning for liberty. I paint the praying people not yet fully evolved, unable to stand up, to see, to look. They retain contorted postures searching for Deity, which I represent by a space of darkness. I choose my colours this way, making use of blown dots such as you see in ancient cave paintings in France and Spain. Sometimes the spots are like an arrow wound, the marks of a target or a demarcation like the skins of animals; they have a quality of something to do with ritual. I use them because of the concept of the Cave. Before mankind created intellectual institutions, and social processes evolved, Man was very primal. Life was ensured from mouth to stomach, dependent on nature. Most people were still involved in primal things: shelter, security, sexuality, perpetuation. People mainly act on impulse without reflecting on what motivates them.

In America they have created instant solutions for primal needs. A wealthy American simply goes to a society party, like a hunter to a hunting ground, to find instant gratification of his primal needs. In contrast, in the Sudan, for example, the Nabi men decorate themselves to be beautiful; they paint themselves and they preen, and the women then get to choose between them. You see this same quality in Hollywood parties but as part of everyday life, not just in an annual ritual.”

The struggle against conditioning

“My father didn’t want me to become an artist. To him, being an artist was much the same as being a performing monkey. He tried to marry me off to various plump cousins but my desire for art was much stronger. It still is!” he laughed.

A Visitation by my Mother -the artist in later years. Photo: Tahir Fatah’s fb

“Despite the opposition from my family I set off from Kurdistan to Baghdad to attend the Art Institute there. Baghdad was to be the first step in my desire for movement as a path to learning. At the time, Baghdad had not been taken over fully by Ba’athism. It was still the fabled city of Harun al-Rashid’s architecture. I felt no conflict between Arab and Kurd and I loved the streets. After having been confined within a tight family order I felt free at last in the capital – an adolescent able to try to do things without being threatened. There was a sense of dream about the city, the gardens, the layout of the streets, the passionate kids – these were the most romantic and painless three years I’ve ever known.

Full tuition was paid at the Baghdad Art Institute. All you had to do was to be a good student.

I passed with a First Class in painting and considered going on to further courses in France or Italy but heard from other artists how hard it was to study and work there at the same time. America seemed different. In Iraq at this time, between 1958-1964, an era of chaos had begun; there were frequent bomb attacks and economic blockades. That was when I decided to leave.”

The Wall

From the recesses of his studio Tahir brought out another series of paintings and displayed them for me to talk about and to photograph one by one. These paintings revealed a combination of abstract forms juxtaposed with realist and even surrealist elements. I asked about the wall-like structures, which featured in some of these, looming from ocean-like swathes of blue, black, and glowing golden colours – the hues of southern California – or indeed Iraq.

“Here, I was using the theme of walls” he said.

“Why walls?

“Burkha” – a different kind of wall (a painting bought by the author in 2022) the light outside the Burkha. Photo: Tahir Fatah’s fb

“I had begun to notice the differences in the type of walls you find in various countries and how these somehow represent the character of the people those nations. For instance, barbed wire and other fences did not feature at all for indigenous people. In the Middle East, walls used to be impermanent structures of mud and sand which could go back to being one with the desert at any time. In Kurdistan the walls are deformed, showing that the place has had a hard time and seems ready to erupt. These are primitive shelters without elaboration. There was no sense of permanency.

Some years ago, the Kurdish tribes still moved about nomadically in tribal areas. By contrast, in America you see massive boulevards, their walls all littered with words and cut prices, opportunities begging to be grasped before they have gone. You go to Washington – it’s built like Rome. These are monuments to American ideology from Jefferson’s day…”

Painting Realpolitik

Of all his broad array of paintings and his mastery of various styles, a historic moment has been captured in Kurdish history deformed by America’s hands: painted on the third day of the failed Kurdish uprising of 1991 it features the impact of President George Bush encouraging Iraq’s Kurds to rise up only to abandon them after they did so. Tahir named the painting ‘Drawing the Line’ emphasising Bush saying “We’ve drawn the line. We are not going to get involved.”

Tahir represented this political about face with an enormous X festooned with skulls across the wintry mountain landscape – symbolic of the needless deaths caused by the American decision. The background also recalls the pathetic campfires, the inhospitality of the makeshift shelters, the hunger, sickness, and the depersonalised deaths.

“The human tragedy is in being buyable” he says. “It is easy to separate people from the political struggle. When people are hungry, they will do anything. Outside forces were starving the Kurds to a point where they had no other choice saying, ‘Carry the gun for me or die’… If the KDP gets money, they buy mercenaries. They don’t have the ideological support necessary to attract fighters simply through loyalty. Barzani had enough power to begin with to disband feudalism, but he lacked the political philosophy to dismantle the jash or develop society. It has stagnated despite being more free than ever. Now there is no central power in Kurdistan. There are scores of little powers in addition to the big parties, which is essentially feudalism. Barzani continues to rally the feudalists. The PKK did not want to make this mistake, but it made other errors like making the leader too important. Once the serok (chief) was captured by his enemies then confusion set in: they did not know whether to follow or not to follow him when everything he said was from behind bars.” In Iraqi Kurdistan, feudalism continues to keep people down. They are not encouraged to develop themselves. Artists are not supported unless they paint folklore and portraits of the tribal chiefs. I offered to make a gift of a portrait of Mullah Mustafa Barzani to the KRG representation in Washington. Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman was presiding. She didn’t even have the time of day to reply to me…

The future

And what about Tahir Fatah himself, painting to transcend the darker recesses of his conditioning, his culture and religion?

“Me? I am like a tragic fighter, a warrior, who keeps on beating a solemn drum. All the time I am painting to fight the dark, but it is a bit like trying to catch your own shadow. The only time you ever catch it is when you finally fall flat on your face and then it is beneath you forever…” [1]

1 Updated from a first interview we did way back in January 1995 in Los Angeles. Our long association endures to this day. See the work of Tahir Fatah at https://www.facebook.com/tahir.fatah/photos_by

Sheri Laizer, a Middle East and North African expert specialist and well known commentator on the Kurdish issue. She is a senior contributing writer for iKurd.net. More about Sheri Laizer see below.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.