A provocation of the mind : Amal Fadel’s political surrealism explained

Hands that come out from the frame expressing some sort of desperate movement; hands that strive for a change: the work of Amal Fadel is full of creative political critiques that are not always understood by the general public. Born in Lahj governorate, Fadel studied biology in Sana’a, where she met artist Aminah al-Nasiri who would later become her teacher and guide. Her work has been exhibited on several occasions in Sana’a at the House of Culture, the House of Art, and the French Cultural Center. Fadel is currently a graphics teacher at the Society’s College in the capital and her latest work was exhibited in the House of Culture during the March 2009 young artists’ exhibition. Some of Fadel’s pieces are now exhibited at the House of Art in Sana’a, near Bab al-Yemen.

YO: -What made you interested in art and in painting?
Amal Fadel (AF): -I started a long time ago. I have been drawing since my childhood… then I stopped for a while, and after that I came back after I was encouraged by professor Aminah (al-Nasiri). I looked at her work and that made me come back, it made me have hope. We are young and there isn’t that much interest in what we do. I have a painting where you can see a jar where hands come out from it, which is a work not well-understood. At the time of that painting I was influenced by professor Talal al-Naggar. I have a lot of work, a lot if ideas, because I feel there are many things I want to work on but at the same time I feel ‘enchained.’ When I go home I draw with freedom; that’s how I drew the jar with the hands, I just felt the urge to do it. There is an urge or a sort of push and also something I want to reach to when I paint. But, I think my ideas end up being pessimistic because the reality we live in makes me think in this way. I use these ideas, which reflect this reality, for my paintings. That’s how the ideas become a painting.

YO: -Did you study fine arts?
AF: -No, I didn’t study art but I learned how to paint. I studied biology at the university and later on I learned from professor Aminah al-Nasiri, who put me in a good direction and sort of guided me. I didn’t study at any art institute or anything like that.

YO: -Who do you look up to in order to improve your work?
AF: -I look up to many artists, and in Yemen I look up to Aminah. When I look at my work, I see that my technique is still weak, not good enough. Sometimes I go to the atelier (in Bab al-Yemen) to learn and improve my paintings, to see how they work.

YO: -How is it to become an artist almost on your own?
AF: -I read many books, and I started to read about basic things in art. Then I began to read about art history, and how to develop artistic skills. Later on, I developed my work on my own, reading, participating in exhibitions, going to the atelier, and learning from the critiques other artists made of my pieces.

YO: -How did you become interested in surrealism?
AF: -In the beginning I did not want to follow any school in particular. I didn’t think about surrealism when I started painting but because my environment and what surrounded me was surrealist I started to paint in a surrealist way. When I started painting, I didn’t know there was a surrealist or any other school, I just painted what I felt like painting. When I painted everyone said my work was surrealist, but I didn’t know what surrealism was. Later on I started reading about surrealism in order to learn what it was. I didn’t want to become specifically a surrealist painter but my environment made me surrealist.

YO: -What do you try to express through your work?
AF: -Sometimes when I start painting I don’t have any goal. Sometimes I feel different inside, I feel a little bit overwhelmed, sometimes I feel relaxed and quiet but what I portray is the opposite to those feelings. Sometimes I feel happy but the painting reflects pain, perhaps due to the environment that surrounds me. Professor Talal al-Naggar asked me once why I always paint in black, always black, never any white. I answered because I just cannot get out from black. Black is hard, it even hurts, is not easy to leave it behind, but with white, I get out easily, quickly and happily. When you see something happy and nice, you are happy and go home happy; when you see something sad, you keep thinking about it. It makes you think. In this sense, when I see things like this, I can’t get them out of my mind and I need to paint them.

YO: -Is your work understood in Yemen?
AF: -Sometimes some paintings are not accepted, like the one where there is a woman sort of breast-feeding as if she were an animal. There is no freedom to express things. Sometimes people refuse my paintings. I have the idea to draw a naked woman but in our society this is not possible: as a woman I cannot draw a naked woman. The entire society reacts like this and don’t understand. They also react in the same way to pain, when pain in reflected in paintings. Many people here tell me that I have a psychological problem when they see my paintings, because in their opinion, people that have problems paint like this. What I think is that the people who don’t have a problem with today’s reality, with Yemen and the world’s current situation, they are the ones that really have a psychological problem. Many people, when they see my paintings, ask what is it and think that I am the one with a problem.

YO: -What do you do when people react like this?
AF: -I don’t say anything. I shut up, and I continue drawing. In the beginning, when I first started painting, I remember my dad asked me why I wasn’t painting nature, and I said to him that everyone draws the same thing; I wanted to draw something different, and when I drew nature I just couldn’t focus and started painting something else.

YO: - What do you call your style?
AF: -I think I take more from expressionism and symbolism than from surrealism. My style is more symbolic or expressionist than surrealist. But I was drawn into surrealism by the environment.

YO: -Is there a subject, a theme, something that you always go back to when you paint?
AF: -Hands. I think everything in the way of hands, and I also like to draw heads: the head thinks, and the hands work.

YO: -You speak about society, politics or women in your work. Is there any message or critique you try to express?
AF: -In my work there are political ideas. I work on political paintings, and there are also ideas about women, for instance, about women and the hijab. The hijab is not only a thing, it is a symbol. Some women become “end notes” in a text, they are not considered important. This is how I see women in my paintings: first of all, they are far away, secondly I try to bring them closer, and finally they go out, they are freed. Women are a far away issue that I bring closer and try to make them come out from this situation. My hands like to work on this: on love, on hate. In some paintings I tried to portray women, sex, and children, because women are only seen in this way. Women are seen as something nice that gives to others, like the earth: people take from it but don’t give back, and the same goes for women. The other issue is that women are seen as servers and have to marry, have children and these are her obligations. There is also another image: women are also strong and intelligent. They know this but don’t work according to this.

YO: -And politics?
AF: -Elections is a subject I work on some paintings. For instance, the painting with the playing boxes or cubes that resemble children’s cubes. In this painting I portray a game, the game of politics, in which the pieces, the boxes, are changed from one place to another following personal interests. Now everyone is like a box, even me. I am used and moved like a box in this game. I also speak about control what you have to hear, see, and say.

YO: -What are the difficulties of being an artist in Yemen?
AF: -There are many problems, especially because there is a lack of help or encouragement. Many young artists have nice ideas and inspiration to work but they don’t have the money to buy what they need to draw and paint. This prevents them from painting. Also, another problem is that there is a lack of support from the family and this provokes an additional problem. The problem also comes from society because society wants people to become doctors or engineers and not painters. In this view there is no future for artists, only for doctors or engineers.

YO: -When you work on a painting, what do you think about: Money or ideas?
AF: -If I would want money I would draw nature, or children, but I draw very different things and people don’t like that. Until now, only one person bought the paintings I like to draw. I don’t draw thinking about the money, I draw what I like. I draw what makes me feel comfortable and happy, and I try to bring my ideas out of my head through my paintings.

YO: -What do you think about the situation of arts in Sana’a?
AF: -It is better now in comparison with the past. Nowadays people have been brought together to see art and talk about art. In the past each artist used to work separately. Now there are more spaces like the atelier where artists talk to each other. This is better than in the past. It developed but not in the way we would want it to in terms of the way people think we still need many changes to happen.

YO: -What are your future projects?
AF: -I hope to participate in exhibitions. I want to work on a personal exhibition and I would like to study a masters or a doctorate program. One of my ideas is to draw two different paintings and to put them together with a rope, like the ropes that used to be used to hang people. The first painting will have sad colors, and it will be the painting that holds the rope but is not hanging from it. The second painting will have happy colors and it will be the one that is hung. A nice painting that dies, will die to express nice things, but these nice things come from something that is sad and not nice.

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