AFIFA ALEIBY: Waiting for the Moon

A woman leans on a window sill, eyes closed, her chin resting in her palm. In her other hand she clutches a small wine glass, the flush of the alcohol just visible on her cheekbones. She is dressed for a formal occasion, but it is one we cannot see. In this moment whatever is happening beyond the frame, does not exist: she is lost in a world of her own. Waiting for the Moon, Afifa Aleiby’s solo exhibition at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, West Palm Beach, comprises an exquisite new series of paintings exploring notions of romance, hope and freedom.

 

Born in Iraq in 1952, Aleiby moved to Russia (back then, the Soviet Union) to study monumental art. On the completion of her studies, she found herself unable to return home due to political conflicts and moved first to live in Italy and then Yemen, before finally settling in the Netherlands where she still resides. Her work draws on all of these experiences, weaving together references to personal and collective histories, diverse artistic movements and cultural identities to create symbolic compositions.

 

While many of her previous paintings have dealt with historic suffering, these latest works, rendered in a vivid colour palette with touches of luminosity, depict moments of rest, contentment and love. Take, for instance, Butterfly Migration Season, in which a woman is having a picnic on a summer’s day while blue and white butterflies encircle her or Pomegranate Tree in which the figure holds one of the ripe fruits in her palm. Both paintings, as with much of Aleiby’s work, have a dream-like quality to them – they are idylls or perhaps romanticised memories, beautiful yet unattainable. We feel this tension in the characters as they gaze into the distance, their monumental bodies frozen in graceful poses like ancient statues.

 

Nature, for Aleiby, is an escape, a place of peace and tranquility, but it also provides her with a certain artistic freedom. Within her luscious landscapes, she can imagine alternative realities, dissolving the boundaries between past, present and future. This is perhaps most obvious in works such as Crown of love, which depicts a man placing a crown of woven flowers on to a woman’s head, in what we can assume is a gesture of love or worship while she clutches in one hand a modern looking compact mirror, suggesting that her own attentions lie elsewhere. The painting is a close echo of Dafna and Apollo, Aleiby’s retelling of the Greek myth in which Apollo, having been struck by one of Cupid’s arrows, falls helplessly in love with Daphne, a nymph who transforms into a laurel tree to escape the god’s advances. While Daphne is traditionally depicted as a victim, Aleiby foregrounds her in the painting in a powerful pose of defiance with her shapeshifting arms held up gracefully before her, while an anguished Apollo hovers by her shoulder. In this way, Aleiby releases the women in both paintings from the expectations of men and grants them autonomy.

 

The act of painting is Aleiby’s own release: it provides her with the freedom in which to express her own thoughts and desires, to make sense of  the past or to simply experience a sense of joy and calm. The painting In the Bathroom, for instance, which depicts a woman perched on a stool washing her hair, merges Aleiby’s childhood memories of public bathhouses with adult feelings of vulnerability and exposure. She describes still life painting, meanwhile, as a form of relaxation and play. In these works, she allows herself to relish in the harmony of colour and the rendering of light and texture. ‘It is a less intense process for me,’ she says. ‘I am not drawing on my memories or experiences, just following my eyes and the movement of paint across the canvas.’

 

Visually radiant and emotionally nuanced, these are paintings that celebrate the transformative power of art and the endless freedom of the wandering mind.