Helen Zughaib: Painting our collective consciousness

It is said that artists represent the consciousness of people. If so, then artist Helen Zughaib has accomplished this in her recent exposition: “Fractured Spring,” which, in part, examines the aftermath of the Arab Spring, and the desperate depression that followed the initial euphoria.
Zughaib’s latest work consists of paintings, many of them diptychs, or multiple pieces, “fractured” in some way, as a statement of her concern with the consequences of the events across the Arab world, following the Arab Spring.
Born in Beirut to a Lebanese father and American mother, Zughaib lived mostly in the Middle East and Europe before coming to the United States to study art. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Syracuse University, College of Visual and Performing Arts in 1981.
US Presidents Barack Obama and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have presented her paintings to visiting heads of state. Her paintings have hung in the White House, World Bank, Library of Congress, and the American Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.
Zughaib’s work has been widely exhibited around the world.
Her best-known series of paintings are her visual interpretations of her father’s stories, “Dreams of My Father,” when he lived in the Levant as a child. They reflect the family’s profound cultural ties to the Middle East, recreated through memories and sensations of her birthplace into vivid compositions of delicate figures and detailed narratives.
“I started to paint my father’s story after the 9/11 attacks which changed so much here,” Zughaib explained.
Zughaib’s distinct style is achieved through gouache, “an opaque water color” used also in the illustrations of the Qur’an, and Persian and Indian miniatures, which she said influenced her.

Generations Lost
This haunting painting depicts generations of veiled women in her signature multi-hued and patterned dresses holding ghostly pale grey photos of their lost loved ones. “I kept wanting to stop because I felt all these women were staring at me,” Zughaib told Arab News during a private tour of her most recent artwork. “It feels so overwhelming; mothers and wives with photos of someone they loved. It represents the dismembering of families, which is why I call it: ‘Generations Lost.’”

‘Veil of Dreams’
Using gouache and meticulous hand-inked repetitive calligraphy, Zughaib superimposes it on a veiled female figure. She explains that much of this painting deals with the hangover of the Arab Spring, “three years ago I used flowers as a sign of hope, and even now, when we have so little hope….There’s a beseeching element to it.”

‘Veiled Secrets’
In Iraq, Zughaib explained, the proverb, “There are many secrets hidden under the abaya,” inspired her to super-impose the hand-inked repetitive Arabic calligraphy over a woman in an abaya, with the words forming an enveloping veil over the figure.

In this painting “the woman is either emerging from a situation, or being swallowed up by it,” Zughaib told Arab News, this painting is part of her series exploring the perceptions and misperceptions of veiled women. “I feel this is how the West looks at it and how we impose our own views on it.”
In ‘Beit — Circle Home’ Zughaib explained the painting represents the forced departures of so many refugees, even though their “leaving circles home.” The word, ‘Beit,’ in Arabic, Zughaib explained means “much more than just the structure of a house, ‘Beit’ is a community” — which is why this painting is so complex and nuanced, in the simplicity of what is being said about one’s home and homeland.
Much of Zughaib’s paintings portray not only the direct chaos of the Arab Spring, but also Syria, Palestine and Lebanon, where she was born and still has familial ties.

‘Di/as/pora’ triptych
The triptych ‘di/as/pora’ is deeply moving, and Zughaib explains that most often it is women in that are left to pick up the empty pieces of life. Here, she said, her female figures move through emptiness that she believes revolution, war and chaos have thrust upon ordinary people. Zughaib’s colorful artwork is often unarming, as it not only succeeds in blending traditional Arab motifs and calligraphy with Western pop art, with haunting imagines of poverty, cultural fragmentation and even spiritual captivity. Here she succeeds in reflecting on both generational and current plights of women devastated by personal loss and purposelessness.

‘Chiclets’
“Little kids in the Arab world sell them on the street,” Zughaib said, in explaining why she was so moved to paint this Arabic/English juxtaposition of the famous brand chewing gum. ” I’ve seen it being sold by refugee kids from both Iraq and Syria.”
It is difficult for most of us to imagine how selling a box of Chiclets might ensure dinner on one’s table that evening, but then, Zughaib’s imagery forces us to examine the Arab world’s worsening poverty and urban chaos; highlighted by the newspaper clipping next to the painting — of a beautiful young girl with a lovely smile, selling Chiclets in traffic.

‘Peace Puzzle’
Each block has ‘salaam’ written into it, Zughaib explained. “It’s a real puzzle; and the idea is that peace is as difficult as an unsolved puzzle. My idea is that if peace was ever to come about, one could solve the puzzle. It would read ‘peace’ across the entire puzzle in this painting.” The artist added that this painting had an unexpected consequence: “Some people also see the English word “peace” in this puzzle. That is the mystery of art.”
This prompted Dagmar Painter, Curator at the Jerusalem Fund/Al Quds Gallery, based in Washington DC, to add: “Art is not what you see, but what you make other’s see.”

‘Spring Flight’
Zughaib said her inspiration for this 12-piece painting came “from the birds in cages I saw all over the Middle East.” She said she thought about it in regards to the Arab Spring, and her paintings here, “represent beauty and freedom — and they’re all trying to escape.” Many of the birds depicted individually in each painting have wilted flowers in their beaks, which Zughaib explained that the “flowers strands like a little thread of life. The flower is a little wilted; the Arab Spring is still there, but it is not vibrant.”

Arab Spring Exodus
“The painting is in reference to Guernica by Pablo Picasso,” explained Zughaib.
“It is an agonizing, angry piece — as though she’s shouting at the world: ‘Why are you not listening to us?’” The combination of the remnant of flowers of the Arab Spring, and juxtaposed by her fingernails, which are eerily similar to Katusha rockets.
As an Arab American, Zughaib feels that her background in the Middle East allows her to mesh her experiences of the Middle East and in America, in a unique fashion — allowing her to be an observer and commentator of both Arab and American culture.
Zughaib is adamant that the arts are a uniquely important method to shape and foster dialogue about developments in the Middle East.
The Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan is currently exhibiting: “Stories My Father Told Me.”
Aside from her recent exhibit in Dearborn, Helen Zughaib has recently exhibited at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery Al-Quds Center in Washington, DC, at the ‘Lure of the Eye’ in Sharjah, UAE, and has upcoming exhibitions scheduled in Baltimore, Maryland; Paris, France; and Amsterdam, Netherlands.
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