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Jan 3, 2026 | Art
Before encountering the artworks themselves,
the moment I stepped into the venue,
I felt as though I were descending into the deep sea.
A profound stillness emerged—the kind found when one sinks toward the ocean floor, where only one’s inner pulse can be heard. I noticed my breath slowing, and I simply watched it do so. From the space itself, I sensed a quiet invitation: you can go deeper. At the same time, I felt momentarily overwhelmed by the intensity of the energy. I sat down, closed my eyes, and listened to the presence lingering in the air.
After about thirty minutes, I found myself guided toward a single work.
It was New Birth by Bassim Al-Shaker (b. 1986, Baghdad), an artist currently based in New York.
Displayed above it was another work, Sky Revolution, suspended from the ceiling. According to the wall text, this piece was based on a scene Al-Shaker witnessed immediately after an aerial bombing during the 2003 Iraq War. Standing before New Birth while looking up at Sky Revolution, I felt I was receiving two things at once: the sensations Al-Shaker experienced amid the violence of war, and the inner transformation of his gaze as he learned how to look at that reality.
If one focuses only on the dark areas of the composition, the image resembles a night sky. Yet just above them, a single flower appears to be drifting. The atmosphere was hushed, as if time itself had momentarily stopped.
To be able to see in this way—
in the instant after devastation,
to look upon a scene that should be defined solely by destruction,
and yet to recognize that something is being born within that very moment—
this act of seeing itself felt already enveloped in light.
At that moment, questions I had long carried in my daily life began to loosen their grip:
How should I look?
This has nothing to do with me—or rather, it must have something to do with me, but I cannot articulate how.
That wordless unease quietly dissolved.
It felt as though I had been allowed to stand precisely “between ashes and roses.”
I turned again toward the work and asked inwardly:
What is it that I am meant to receive from you, here and now?
What came was not fragmented but simultaneous—
from above (as there were paintings overhead and to my left),
from the side,
from the work as a whole,
and directly.
A stillness that arises within you without reason—
you do not need to contain or define it.You will look at the whole, with the whole of yourself.
Even when you believe you are focusing on darkness,
you must look—entirely, wholly—with all that you are.
Sky.
Atmosphere.
Debris scattering overhead.
A deafening explosion.
And then, immediately afterward, a strange, frozen silence.
From the exhibition text, I learned that this landscape is deeply etched into Al-Shaker’s memory. He spent his formative teenage years amid the 2003 Iraq War and the violent instability that followed. He studied painting at the University of Fine Arts in Baghdad and, in 2013, represented Iraq at the Venice Biennale. Afterward, he moved to New York, where his practice shifted from direct depictions of war toward more abstract explorations of color, atmosphere, particles, and fragments.
Al-Shaker has said:
Photo © by Alix Bailey 2022, “Alex and Pink” 42” x 60”“These paintings are not about death.
They are not about bombs.
They are about the instant after an explosion.
Every painting suggests a new beginning.
Death exists, but I have gained a new life.
I am still alive.”
What I received from New Birth resonated deeply with these words. Together, they prompted a transformation in how I understand the act of seeing itself.
I was also struck by the words of the festival’s artistic director, Hoor Al-Qasimi:
“This festival reminds us that we all live under the same sky,
and that until everyone is free,
no one is truly free.”
Entering the exhibition space felt like descending into a place of prayer. Within it, encountering a single artwork became an event that unfolded unmistakably within my own interior life—a remembering of the beginning of life, and of a quiet light extended toward me, as if to say, there.
From New Birth, I did receive something.
A path—one that asks us to commit ourselves fully,
and to carry what we have received into shared life.
