watercolors. drawings. paintings. collages. on paper.

As an Iraqi-American artist, my work embodies the alienating and conflicted experience of Arabs living in contemporary Western society. This experience is wrought with contradictory worldviews, traditional gender role-playing, and an inescapable internalization of the xenophobic paranoia that surrounds us. My works form a maelstrom of shattered media, combining techniques such as drawing, painting, digital manipulations, and collage. Each image creates worlds loosely based on distorted historical facts, disjointed narratives, and fractured stereotypes. Within the fresh wreckage of my unstable compositions, absurd caricatures are tangled together in exaggerated, frozen snapshots of fairytale destruction. As viewers, we are forced to inhabit the disarming, liminal space where the media-drenched Middle-Eastern and Western worlds collide. We are all refugees of perception, seeking refuge in fractured narratives. In this gallery of paradoxes, I invite you to linger, to question, to find solace in the chaos.

artist statement.

2009 MFA. Film/Video. California Institute of the Arts

Lives and Works in Oregon, USA

B. 1984. Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

sahar al-sawaf

education

2006 BA. Art Studio. BS. Graphic Design. University of California, Davis

Most of the works are mixed-media on paper - I sometimes take old drawings and re-purpose them through collage, but I mostly start by using charcoal to create the piece, collage with cut-outs from newspapers and found paper, paint with acrylic, oil, and its a constant layering process of drawing, collage, and color. All the newspaper comes from places throughout the Middle East that I have traveled to in past years. Additionally, I use digital tools to manipulate imagery to cut-out and collage with.

I consider my work to be visual journals of my life experiences - stories that I have experienced or that have been told to me. The most important souvenirs I have collected from my travels have been Arabic newspapers. Heavy in weight, I have been collecting them for years, as they are a connection to who I am, where I come from and to the family that I have lost due to war. In my art, the use of the Arabic and English language media is crucial to illustrate the narratives I create. I scavenge for materials before they are trashed; I seek them out, save and re-purpose them so they are reborn into a new life with a rough hairy skin. Through these interweaving of different perspectives, I build a foundation for cultural dialogue and collective aesthetic exploration.

TECHNIQUE

gulf war leaflets

I create art from Gulf War leaflets dropped in Iraq during both the 1991 conflict and the more recent invasion in 2003. These airborne propaganda leaflets, historically used on a large scale since World War I, aim to influence combatants and civilians alike in enemy-controlled territories. By combining humanitarian air missions with leaflet propaganda, military forces can sway public sentiment against leadership while preparing communities for the arrival of enemy combatants. The leaflets themselves bear powerful imagery and messages. Incorporating them into large-scale art pieces serves as a commentary on the profound impact of war and propaganda. Through my reinterpretation of their imagery and text, I create new artworks that challenge their original meaning and context. Ultimately, I hope that rearranging and reinterpreting these images prompts viewers to engage with and contemplate the profound messages they convey, as well as the human cost of war.