A social critique through the medium of painting: artist Mohammed al-Yemany speaks

Mohammed al-Yemany, Picture taken by Jean-Baptiste Lopez JBL©

Mohammed al-Yemany has been teaching fine arts since 1994, when he started a project that today represents the only atelier in Sana’a where students can go and learn how to paint and draw. Today Al-Yemany continues to hold classes at his atelier in Yemen Hall alongside teaching at the Queen Arwa University, and writing for several publications. He is a specialist in logograph and has participated in several exhibitions and workshops.

Yemen Observer (YO):- How did you become interested in art? What were your beginnings like as a painter? 
Mohammed al-Yemany:- I will not talk about my beginnings but about why I chose art as my path in life. Art is one of the best points of contact between people in society. In the past, present or future, art is one of the best ways to transport the ideas and culture of each society and each historical period. It is for this reason that I chose art in general as the most important activity in my life. Art is like messages transmitted among people, even sometimes to solve problems in society, art is useful. 

YO:- These are your thoughts about art in general, but what was your personal motivation to become a painter? 
MAY:- I started due to the effect artist Hashem Ali had on me. I really loved what he was doing and that is why I started to become a painter. He was the first and best painter in Yemen and many painters in the country have learned from him, in a direct or indirect way. I learnt from him, from his hand, from his rhythm and way of painting. 

YO:- What are the ideas that inspire you to paint? 
MAY:- My main sources of inspiration comes from philosophy. I take a lot of ideas from philosophy, from religion, from political science. These thoughts or ideas, I read them, I use them, I develop them, and I remake them through my paintings. I move them and try to interpret them by means of the artistic work. The majority of my works speak about issues, small and current issues, from here or abroad issues. What we read and think and see, is reflected in my work. 

YO:- Speaking about philosophy and political sciences, what inspires you specifically? 
MAY:- From philosophy I learnt that the good and perfect nature of mankind, comes from his beliefs. The quality or the quantity of what art gives depends on all the things you believe from the other. When you pay attention only to yourself and you love only yourself, you will always remain small, without big values. The best people are those who give, who do things for others; they are the best due to the fact that they give to others and that is a value in itself. In today’s world there are a lot of rich people, millionaires, kings, businessmen, but in history or in historical terms, they are not the ones that matter. History remembers and speaks of people like Mother Teresa, Shakespeare in literature, doctor Louis Pasteur… it is from these people that we can actually look for and obtain ideas and inspiration. We should not live for ourselves, I don’t want to live for myself, for my clothes, my things; the real life is when you live for others, when you do things for other people. This is the difference between mankind and animals. Animals are there to eat, nothing else, we are not here to live without giving anything and only taking. Mankind cannot live without giving something. 

YO:- And from politics? 
MAY:- Politics is the best form of lies, is the best way to be a big liar. The best politicians are those who can lie better than others, that can convince society and others to end up having what them, the politicians want for themselves. I also learnt from politics that things are black or white, not grey. Half of things don’t work, half of a solution doesn’t work, grey doesn’t work. People need to dream and politicians should make those dreams reality, which is how politics should be. This is what I believe politics should be in order to be good, to respond to the people’s needs and not the opposite, which is that people become servers of politicians, a means for politicians to obtain what they want. For me politics is the opposite, it is not a service for one person. 

YO:- How do you translate these ideas into paintings? 
MAY:- Among the levels of bad states that you can have inside yourself when you don’t feel good, I try to extract the worst of these feelings in order to remove them from myself. In the end it is a way of shouting out, loud, and so the image inside comes out in a clear and good way, clear and in a strong way for others to see. Through the brush you can take out the evil or bad things that you feel inside yourself. When these bad feelings are too big, the painting will be more beautiful. 

YO:- Art for art or art for society? 
MAY:- Artists started by being something similar to clowns. During the Middle Ages, the artist started to decorate and do nice things to the palace of the king or for the church, and so art was art for art, just to be beautiful. That is why artists started being like clowns. Nowadays artists or art has started to speak, it has a special language to speak about all subjects that are interesting to society. Today art shows the evil contained in many subjects important to society. Be it painting, journalism, or TV, art can speak about all of this. Now art speaks about issues and tries to solve them, it is a language used to talk about problems. Before this, it was just entertainment or decoration. 

YO:- What specific issues trouble you and make you want to paint them?  MAY:- The majority of my ideas and the things that worry me are related to the needs of simple people in society. I try to transmit through my paintings the idea of all the people in our society that are in need. I am always listening to these people’s problems through what I hear, what I see, and how I feel. I am also a writer, I write in newspapers and magazines about the problems of the poor and the basic needs of people. I write about the history of people, justice on our world, our own beauty, and ancient history… 

YO:- What do you want to change through your paintings? 
MAY:- There is a proverb from Mahamat Gandhi that says “you have to live as you would like life to be.” It is for this reason that I am not an adventurer, and I don’t say that my paintings will change the world but rather I think art is a part - and an important one - in the life of humankind. If you are a writer, a painter, a journalist, you need to do as much as you can to reduce evil in society and live in a better way so as to change things for better. We should all be thinking about how to do better for the entire world, that the work we do does not only exist to be well known and respond to our personal interests, but that it helps the rest of the world. 

YO: -Have you changed anything in Yemen though your work? 
MAY: - I am professor at university and I also work in my atelier, and through my work I see that all these places give you diplomas but never give you knowledge. Through my way to teach I try to give something special and different to my students: knowledge. I try to make come out what my students have inside. For this reason there are a lot of young people that try to do cultural evenings, exhibitions, people that critique qat. When people start to change inside, to accept the idea of becoming better in society, is through this that we can change the entire world. 

YO:- What do you think about the current situation of art in Yemen? 
MAY:- The situation of art in Yemen is not balanced, is not clear, not stable. One day it is up there and the next it is down on the floor. The problem is that the people responsible for art at the state level consider art as something unimportant, as something secondary, it is for this reason that the are no departments for fine arts in Sana’a University. Even in primary and secondary schools there are no programs or teachers for art and there is no requirement to make art part of the school syllabus. There are no real activities related to art except for some exhibitions, and the President prize each year, which amounts to nothing, just $5000 per year, divided between two artists, this is nothing. If the ideas of these people responsible at the state level start to change and develop into an understanding of art as a discipline of great value, they would understand that art is useful to educate society, to fight against terrorism, to change the lives of young people in Yemen. When they begin to understand all this, I will be able to say that art in Yemen is getting better, but at present there is no real change. 

YO:- Is there a Yemeni artistic movement? 
MAY:- There is not a real artistic movement in Yemen or across the Arab countries at present. The only exception was Iraq, where Shaqer al Said developed a movement that was called al-Khurufiat (the letters) during the 70s. This movement was based on the idea that Arabic letters have an image, a sound, and a design of their own. 

YO:- Where is art going? 
MAY:- It goes to the ministries’ backyards, what the Minister of Culture does with the paintings he receives is he either places them in back rooms, halls, or even piles them up in the toilets. There was a project to carry out three things: create a gallery for continuous exhibitions, a museum, and a school of fine arts, but all these were ideas and projects that stayed on the paper of the Ministry of Culture and never became a reality. 

YO:- And on the side of the artists themselves? 
MAY:- Corruption continues to develop in Yemen more and more, affecting everyone. It is due to this that there is not a program or a system to control and apply the law against corruption. For instance, there are a lot of scholarships and invitations to participate in many cultural activities around the world.  Unfortunately it is the government and the ministry that receives them and so they pass through the state and thus they give them to whom they want, not to whom is necessarily worthy. If these scholarships and invitations are always given to friends of friends and are kept for an elite group of people, always they same ones and the well known ones, then there are never opportunities for others. If the President and state politics pay attention to your work and you help them as well, then you are welcome and they will help you, if you don’t do this, the door is closed to you. Artists in Yemen are becoming worse and worse. 

YO:- Has the situation changed? 
MAY:- The number of artists that work today are more numerous than before, but the fear is that these new artists will not have enough help and support to continue. Right now any artist dreams of leaving Yemen and Yemen has become a place that pushes artists to want to leave to other countries. I am not only speaking about artists but also about writers, people involved in sports… they don’t have the support or the courage and leave Yemen in order to find opportunities they don’t have here. The majority of Yemenis don’t work in the domain they love, and it is because of this that artists and artisans don’t find their place here. Since artists need to find other ways to gain a living, they are not focused on their artistic creation. In the case of women, they are more interested in art than men because women in Yemen have too many problems with rights they don’t have and so they try to find a way to express this. Art thus becomes a way to explain their problems and claims. Among young men, art is always about finding a way to gain a living. Both, men and women, are not in a fair situation. 

YO:- What are your future projects? 
MAY:- I want to open several centers or institutes to teach painting. I would also like to double the education activity I am involved in, to help people to learn. People also need to double their work and find a good way to show their work to others. Last month I participated in several exhibitions related to the issue of Palestine and what was happening in Gaza. Soon I will participate in several exhibitions about the situation of women in Yemen.

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