Syrian Kurdish Artist Lawand: ‘I Am Not a Painter of Loneliness’

By Sharmila Devi

LONDON - The paintings of Lawand - a Syrian Kurdish artist who prefers to use only his first name and keep his surname secret - are almost eerily prescient of the current conflict in his homeland.

The images were inspired during his last visit to Syria that lasted several months in 2008 and are on exhibition in London until the end of November. One has a woman surrounded by tombstones. Others feature elongated figures, sometimes solitary, sometimes with a child, with faceless heads in formless backgrounds.

“I rented a studio in old Damascus, in Bab Tuma, one of the oldest quarters of the world that still exists,” he told Rudaw at the Mosaic Rooms, a cultural space in west London that showcases creative voices from the Middle East.

“Looking back, I must have sensed that everything could fall apart, burn out. I felt the oppression of the place. I was following my instinct. It’s often the case that the instinct of the artist foreshadows what happens.”

Lawand was born in Aleppo in 1984 and moved to France with his family when he was 10. He always knew he wanted to be an artist, like his father, and the duo had a joint exhibition when he was a teenager.

Since then, he has exhibited throughout Europe and collaborated on books with poets including Adonis, the Syrian poet, essayist and translator who has been described as the greatest living poet of the Arab world.

Lawand had a brother who was born in 1983, the year before him. He was also named Lawand and died when he was a baby. When the artist was born, his father decided to give him the same name. “Now I live for two people,” he said.

He used the signature Lawand on his first painting made as a child. While his paintings and style have changed, he has kept this signature throughout his career.

Lawand’s main languages are French and Arabic, although he can understand Kurdish. He describes his identity as that of an “artist” rather than belonging to any particular ethnic or religious affiliation.

But he follows closely developments in the main Kurdish communities of the Middle East and he does hope for some kind of a Kurdish “federation” that would one day straddle the current borders of the countries where the main Kurdish populations are located.

“All Kurds dream of independence. We’re the biggest people without a state. But we have to look for a diplomatic solution and reach a deal with the Turks, Syrians, Iraqis and so on. The Kurds have never sought a big empire. They live close to nature, the earth, in the mountains, and they have survived all this time.”

He hopes to exhibit one day in Erbil, although he was disapproving of what he saw as nepotism and cronyism in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which he compared with an Arab Gulf state.

“The Kurdish federation kicked off with a lot of errors in Iraq. They bought in a small minority with their families and people close to them to rule. It acts like a Gulf state,” he said. “My fear is the Kurds in Syria face the same fate.”

He is hopeful about the tentative peace talks between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Ankara. “If there is a dialogue with Turkey, then that will open the way to a solution in Syria,” he said.

Lawand recently collaborated with Pascale Petit, a poet whose 15 poems -- directly inspired by his drawings -- have been published in the collection Effigies. “In the background there is the shadow of the terrible situation in Lawand’s homeland, Syria,” she wrote.

Like many of his compatriots, he feels emotional about the Syrian conflict, which started in 2011 and grinds on relentlessly.

“It started with young Syrians wanting freedom, not jihad. After the first six months, I lost hope. No one’s talking about freedom anymore,” he said. “I don’t know who fired which shot anymore. They’re all leading Syria to catastrophe. There’s no big plot but all the countries involved - the US, UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar - they all threw oil on the fire. It’s sad for Syria because my country is one of the origins of civilization.”

Lawand describes his work as “engaged but non-political”. He says he draws upon human experience, including the Kurdish genocide, Saddam Hussein’s chemical attack on Halabja in 1988 and the slaughter of Palestinians in the Lebanese camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982.

But he also describes his work as essentially life-affirming. “I am not a painter of loneliness, even though my paintings are so little populated. I see in each and every one of my characters the entire human race,” he wrote about his current exhibition. “My characters often seem to be moving slowly and sluggishly but they are headed towards the endless path of light... so that my paintings express a desire to live.”

“Equinox, From Beirut to London” is on show at the Mosaic Rooms until November 29.