Iranian artist Golnaz Fathi has a diploma in Iranian calligraphy and has trained with master calligraphers; but she has chosen to move away from traditional calligraphy to develop her distinctive abstract style of creating visuals through indecipherable lettering. By making the words illegible, she paradoxically allows her work to become more comprehensible, because when freed from the constraints of language and script, the visuals become accessible to everyone.
“I studied calligraphy, but in my painting I work on destroying the word. I learnt all these intricate rules and one day started kicking all these down. I had to learn calligraphy to perfection in order to take it apart,” Fathi says.
In her latest exhibition, “Line/Khat”, in Dubai at The Third Line gallery, the artist continues her experimentation with calligraphic mark-making by using unconventional media such as ballpoint and rollerball pens. The show features a selection of the artist’s diaries and notebooks, along with works on paper and canvas that are unreadable, yet reveal an intimate personal narrative.
Fathi was inspired to create this body of work after a visit to Shanghai in 2012, where she found a series of folded handmade books that brought back memories of the notebooks she used to collect and carry around with her as a child. In a nostalgic return to the ritual of diary-keeping she began obsessively and repetitively penning down her thoughts and feelings every day, and turning every page of her diary into an abstract artwork.
The artist refers to this process as a “voyage into the unknown world”; and by exhibiting these diaries and notebooks, she offers viewers a glimpse into the meditative creative process by which she plays with words and numbers, expanding them almost subconsciously into beautiful abstract mindscapes.
The works on paper and canvas, done with ballpoint and rollerball pens, are like an expansion of the pages of her diaries. The works on paper are from the “Black” series and the “Blue” series. Composed of simple fluid lines, the untitled abstract paintings map unknown landscapes that speak about the dualities of life, and the quest for order amid the chaos of an ever-changing universe. The paintings on canvas are embellished with splashes of acrylic paint.
“Art is not supposed to be read. It is not literal. Like life itself, each artwork can be understood in myriad ways; and I want to leave it to my viewers to interpret each work in their own way,” Fathi says.
The Third Line is hosting another exhibition, “Nowherescape”, by Alireza Masoumi, which also features works done with ballpoint pen. In this body of work, Masoumi has explored emblematic landscape portrayal through oil paintings on canvas and ballpoint works on paper.
In his large-scale, expressionist paintings, the artist has used layers of frenzied lines and brush strokes and bright colours to create dramatic and turbulent contemporary landscapes that speak about the mundaneness of everyday life, the hustle and bustle of a city, and the beauty of nature. Hidden amid the explosion of colours and strokes is a small figure of tightrope walker, signifying the fine balancing act that life is, and the tiny speck that human beings are in the cosmos.
In contrast with the overwhelming paintings, the works on paper are small, and the landscapes are created with dense crisscrossing lines of the pen, inviting viewers to study the finer details of the landscapes.
Jyoti Kalsi is an arts-enthusiast based in Dubai.
“Line/Khat” and “Nowherescape” will run at The Third Line, in Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz, until January 28.
