Reconstruction   
EOA.Projects Gallery, London SW11

5/5

KURDISH-IRAQI artist Walid Siti addresses and expresses his native land’s beauties, conflicts, political upheavals and attempts at reconstruction.

A political refugee from the Ba’athist government, Siti is now based in London. For him the destruction of Iraq’s population, institutions and infrastructure goes beyond political analysis and humanitarian empathy. It is also personal.

Aware of the limitations of direct political comment, Siti approaches these themes obliquely.

Motifs suggestive of mountains, pyramids, ladders and towers recur in the paintings, sketches and installations in his solo exhibition. 

The pared-down visual language evokes, but does not describe, huddled hill towns, Kurdistan’s mountainous landscape and the Mesopotamian Ziggurat.

Using a restrained palette of subtle gradations from black to white, Siti builds these motifs from complexly interacting dashes, lines and swirls — some forming ladders or oblongs — so that the expected solidity of the motifs dissolve into disconcerting insubstantiality.

In New Mountain, a luminous whiteness ascending against the descending lines of its gloomy surroundings promises enlightenment, yet closer inspection reveals that the “mountain” consists of fragile, entangled ladders so densely crowed that no person could possibly climb them. 

A large, maze-like wall relief made of taut thread, tiny nails and straw “ladders” throws shadows of blueish lines as ethereal and mutable as rainbows. These works lose much by reproduction. See the originals if you can.

Readers who recall the Morning Star’s previous reviews of Siti’s works will welcome this exhibition. 

In the cynical art world climate, which prizes cleverness above integrity, a contemporary artist with something worth saying, who says it in a superbly visual way, is rare. Siti is such an artist.