Migration of the Sign
This artist is pursued by his past. He is converting
his exile and his being as a human who lost his country
to boundless, excellent shapes which have no language or
nationality. He is following his visual memories, fueled
by his new life regardless of the country he moves to or
lives in. He continuously goes through revisions of his
situation as an artist.
Because he is a professional artist, it is natural for
him to utilize this global language to revive a dialogue
that opens for him ways that reveal his potential,
subjects and style.
His works lie along a triad of history, nation and
exile. A dialogue, in which he looks for a moment that
reflects a shape which does not exist anymore, and for
an identity which he needs to perpetuate. This is why,
we find in his art a reproduction of graphic productions
like the ones generated four thousand years ago in
Mesopotamia as prints carved in mud called “Circular
stamps” which are loaded with cuneiform writings and
secret magical signs.
His paintings approach those great ones capable of
making diversified signals. Signals in his works come
from afar to land on the surface in a plastic frame,
which also sometime compete to get out of its own
history into a new geography created by the Artist.
Therefore, it is natural to admit our inability to
decipher these signs and riddles because they are part
of a mental structure of a civilization and people who
exist no more, but the artist arose it from a long sleep
and loaded it with popular daily material in a strange
but symbolic language. That is why we could find a key
to help us understand the work of this Artist and his
universe.
Thamer Dawood was born in Iraq, the country which
invented writing, where signs converted from voice to a
picture and became later the foundation of human
thinking…in that country, humans evolved from wild to
civilized thinking. Our Artist here, converts his inner
voices into pictures capable of integrating and
connecting together different beliefs through a crowded
revolution of colors carried as adjacent signs of
everyday life which we meet everywhere. Writings in
different languages, numbers and color spots gathering
at the bottom of the painting and shattering upwards
into a strange structure of layers like those of history
itself. In his paintings, the substrate converts into
lines symbolizing historical signs etched in
Mesopotamian ways to build on it modern and contemporary
visual scenes.
This style does not only come through the technique
only, but also via symbolism… to turn his works into
places and roads for living things to settle in among
crowds of signals, and take their places in the future
and history. He shows us the human being it its clearest
form and appearance like someone who is being torn
between the known and the unknown, the History and
Geography … and he could depict all that through his
vocational secrets and magic world.
Dr. Balasem Mohammad
Baghdad – 2009
