Art Is the Right Way

Culture Desk, " ART: 'I AM YOU' IN ROME, WIJDAN'S EXPLOSION OF COLOUR " - ANSAMed - Rome, Italy
Monday, June 1, 2009

An explosion of colour and transparency, with a skilful use of calligraphy, in an attempt to portray the metaphysical side of love. This is the essence of 'I am You', princess Wijdan Al Hashemi's one-woman show.

The princess is Jordan's ambassador in Italy.

The exhibition opened in the last few days at the LipanjePuntin gallery in Rome. The theme of the exhibition, which is curated by Khalid Khreis, is love, which, as the princess herself says ''represents a constant and sublime source of inspiration''.

In harmony with Sufi thought (the mystic branch of Islam) and in an attempt to capture the profound essence of the relationship between human beings and their surroundings, in her second one-woman show in Rome, the artist plays with the concept of 'you are me', which ''according to Sufism means the unity between the lover and the loved, whether it be God, a person, or nature''.

While she does not belong to this branch of religion, the ambassador says that she admires its message: ''I wish I was part of it. The Sufi brotherhood has managed to obtain the highest form of love through their acceptance of everything, without caring about religious differences, or differences in look, strength or weakness''.

In the exhibition the Hashemite princess, who describes herself as a calligraphic artist and not a calligrapher, works on two different levels of the written word: its form and its meaning.

The continuous repetition and overwriting remind us of Sema, the ecstatic dance of the Mevlevi dervishes.

In all the works and in the central installation 'Banners of faith, banners of love', Wijdan Al Hashemi uses materials which recall the far East, such as rice and mulberry paper.

Part of the world of art for more than forty years, with a doctorate in the history of Islamic art at the prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, the Jordanian princess says she is pleased with the attention being paid now by the West to contemporary Islamic art.

''In the 1980s and 1990s nobody was interested in the artistic output of the Arab countries. Only in the last decade of last century and even more in this first part of the twenty-first century has the world begun to notice the East'', she says.

In 1979 the ambassador founded the Royal Society of Fine Arts in Jordan, ''a place where Arabic artists and artists from all the developing countries can exhibit their work, without prejudice or discrimination''.

Profoundly convinced that Art is the right way to recover dialogue between the West and the Arab world which broke down after September 11, the princess doesn't hide her wish to organise another show in Italy, but says that ''it is still too soon''.

The ambassador has worked over the years to found the opening in 1980 of the National Art Gallery of Jordan in Amman, as well as the School of Art and Design at the University of Jordan, where she is president, in 2002.