Written by WAFA ROZ

Born in Baniyas in 1958, Ahmad Moualla is a prolific Postmodern Syrian artist whose unique style is imbued with strong elements of expressionism. Although he is best known for his intense calligraphic paintings and his complex figurative compositions, the artist has built a multifaceted career around graphic arts and set design as well as painting.He graduated with a degree in visual communications from the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Damascus in 1981, after which he obtained a diploma in 1987 from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Moualla returned to Syria in 1988, where he taught at The University of Damascus from 1989 to 1996. Winner of the best foreign poster at the Munich Exposition, Mouallais a prolific designer of book covers, posters, and murals; he has also participated in the scenography of several films and TV series, and designed numerous productions for the Syrian National Theater.

Moualla’s home city overlooks the sea, so the artist first opened his eyes to the vast blue vista of the Mediterranean, enchanted by its soothing rhythm. Two years later, his family moved to Al Raqqa,a city on the Euphrates River that offered the young boy a warm, earthy panorama and rich cultural roots stretching back to the Hellenistic period. Sounds and colors were the first to attract the attention of the budding artist. He grew up in a close-knit family of talented creatives, where he found plenty of outlets for his budding interest in the arts.

For example, as a youngster, he and his brothers staged elaborate theatrical productions. The artist’s first forays into set design involved stealing bed sheets, blankets, and small furniture items from the family home to utilize on stage. Moualla was never scolded for these efforts, however, for he was brought up by a loving father who encouraged him to fulfill his passion for art.  

Moualla looks back on a childhood shaped by his parents’ keenness for festive gatherings, which frequently filled their home with friends and neighbors, sharing meals and discussions. Open to diverse ideologies, his family members were ready to discuss Lenin and attend the Friday prayer at the same time.  All of this encouraged the development of Moualla’s rich visual memory and fostered a socio-political consciousness that would later find expression in his creative output. The fundamental themes of his work grew to revolve around humanity and the oft-strained relationship between the individual, society, and its authorities.

Before college, Moualla created traditional Islamic calligraphy and paintings as a source of revenue. He sold paintings to barber shops and restaurants and illustrated headlines on banners and posters. In college, Moualla studied graphic design and semiotics, which aided in the development of both his technical skills as an artist and his thinking around symbolic representation. When he returned to Damascus in 1988, Moualla was ready to build a career in graphic design, but instead prioritized painting. He took off on his journey producing figurative paintings in colorful settings that depicting social ceremonies and gatherings. Initially, he strived to master techniques inspired by the realism of French history painters such as Jacques Louis David and Eugene Delacroix. Through the years, however, he freed himself from the constraint of these rigid technical formulas and embraced an informal expressionist style, allowing the lucidity of acrylic paint, his spontaneous gestural brushstroke, and the chance interaction of colors lead the way to his shapes and forms. 

This emotive technique reaches its pinnacle in one of his most famous bodies of work, Grey Ash (2011), which echoes a 1997 homage to the late Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous. In this series of large-scale paintings, dismal silhouettes stray into abstraction, hazy, ghostlike figures that gather in chaotic crowds of smoky black and white tones. Moualla’s figures are devoid of any facial expression, gender representation, or discernable apparel; they are borderless, without contour, brushed together with luminous strokes that evoke a flood of water. These characters form surreal scenes throughout the paintings, suggesting – among many things – leaders giving speeches, musicians performing, and citizens gathered, baffled, around a huge hole in the ground. His compositions are segmented into different strata within which different happenings are depicted. The centerpiece of this series is an eight-panel painting dedicated to prominent Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish; it is meant to depict the story of the poet’s life, which, Moualla claims, is also the story of Palestine itself.

Merging abstraction derived from Islamic traditions with that of the west, Moualla introduced Arabic calligraphy into his large-scale figurative paintings, taking the written word beyond its ornamental aesthetic dimension. In his 2014 exhibition entitled Solemn, I Stand the Test of Time, verses from Arabic poems insinuated the underlying messages of the massive canvases they adorned. In one such painting, the artist inserts verses from Al Mutanabbi and Al Marri poems that talk of a time of monkeys, hinting to the state of ignorance and compliance that humanity has reached. In others, Moualla illustrates lengthy, repetitive scripts of poems attributed to different poets, overlapped in patterns, sweeping the entire surface of an intensely colorful background. Here, he deploys calligraphy skillfully to obscure the reading of a text, demanding his viewer to go beyond the meaning of the words into the underlying, radiating beauty of their form and their message.

Ahmad Moualla currently lives and works in Paris.

Sources

Exhibit-E.com. "Ahmad Moualla." Artist Press - Gulf News - Green . Art . Gallery. Accessed January 30, 2018. http://www.gagallery.com/press/gulf-news/artists.

Exhibit-E.com. "Ahmad Moualla." Artist Press - Aquila Style magazine - Green . Art . Gallery. Accessed January 30, 2018. http://www.gagallery.com/press... 

"Bilan et perspective de la politique culturelle syrienne (2) - Entretien avec Ahmad Moualla." Nonfiction.fr. Accessed January 30, 2018. https://www.nonfiction.fr/article-2545-bilan_et_perspective_de_la_politique_culturelle_syrienne__2___entretien_avec_ahmad_moualla.htm

Gallery, Green Art. "Syrian painter Ahmad Moualla's tribute to late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish." PRLog. Accessed January 30, 2018. https://www.prlog.org/11683288... 

Jyoti Kalsi, Special to Weekend Review. "In the zone of uncertainty." GulfNews. September 30, 2011. Accessed January 30, 2018. http://gulfnews.com/culture/arts/in-the-zone-of-uncertainty-1.878211

Boucher, Katie. "A man of characters." The National. November 01, 2009. Accessed January 30, 2018. http://www.thenational.ae/arts... 

International Contemporary Artists - Mark Hachem Gallery. Accessed January 30, 2018. http://www.markhachem.com/AHMA... 

Previous Exhibitions - Mark Hachem Gallery. Accessed January 30, 2018. http://www.markhachem.com/exhibitionspreviouss?lang=en&limit=20&start=20.

أحمد معلا: حوار السلطة والشعب... كي لا تحترق سوريا. Accessed January 30, 2018. http://www.al-akhbar.com/print/10321

"أحمد معلّا يستعيد ورود أبي فراس الدمشقية." Alhayat. Accessed January 30, 2018. http://www.alhayat.com/m/story... 

MOUALLA Faces and stories 1أحمد معلا وجوه وقصص
AHMADJMoualla. YouTube. March 30, 2011. Accessed January 30, 2018.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHpat5Vdygk

Ahmad MOUALLA Faces and stories 2 أحمد معلا وجوه وقصص
AHMADJMoualla. YouTube. March 30, 2011. Accessed January 30, 2018.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLZYow2VBaw&t=325s

AHMADJMoualla. YouTube. March 29, 2011. Accessed January 30, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhyMo125d_k.

أحمد معلاAhmad Moualla
AHMADJMoualla. YouTube. March 28, 2011. Accessed January 30, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rjoeTc0aMg&t=12s.

Aga Khan Museum. September 07, 2017. Accessed January 30, 2018. https://www.agakhanmuseum.org/syrian-symphony.