Village Raw - ISSUE 9

VILLAGE RAW
ART & CULTURE
DOUBLE TAKE
Graphic designer, illustrator and artist Noma Bar challenges conventional
wisdom through a play with visual perception.
Words by Lito Apostolakou. Artworks by Noma Bar.
PHOTO BY SARAH DEANE.
There is an irresistible lure in Noma Bar’s bold, minimalist imagery.
It ensnares the viewer’s gaze in a constant perceptual reversal.
Within what the eye perceives as one image lies another
one which exists in opposition to the first. Together they create
a unity of opposites. Yet we cannot see both at the same time.
Our gaze shifts from one to the other in a journey of discovery
of parallel - or conflicting realities. Noma uses negative space to
produce striking images whose interpretation requires a double
take. He has been called a “master of visual illusion,” but it is not
for their illusory qualities his illustrations are sought the world
over - they tell powerful stories.
“I am not interested in any visual trickery,” says Noma. “I am
interested in the story. We are in a reality that has two sides. We
are born into conflict.” In his native Israel Noma became aware
very early on of the polarisation and intransigence that conflict
generates as each side becomes entrenched in its own beliefs
and unable to entertain the other’s views. The ever present Israeli-Palestinian
conflict has been part of his life. And conflict is
what his illustrations engage with but without becoming inflexible
propositions or monolithic aphorisms. Noma deploys negative
space to depict alternative versions of reality and perspectives
not apparent at first glance. His illustrations contain two images
interlocked with each other - forcing the mind to alternate
between interpretations. Both images cannot be seen at once,
and this tension and unity of opposites opens up conversations
about social and political issues.
Looking for images within images, Noma discovers: “things
that do not exist and yet they are around us.” Shapes and forms
that you perceive with unseeing eyes every day - taking them for
granted - hide something else. Then, one day you make the discovery.
“If you look at places people don’t look at, you become
more aware, more sensitive to things, to social and political problems,”
says Noma. It is through this process of discovery and conscious
looking that a script is created and a story is built. The
process of discovery is essentially a painstaking process of distillation:
“to take the complexity of a political problem and to distil
it to one thing, one element.”
If Noma’s artworks initially produce a visual punch with their
bold colours and economy of line, they also compel the viewer to
read them. They are wordless narratives. The eye peels off their
layers and reveals the story they are telling. Noma’s idiom has
been partly a product of his experience as a young designer moving
to London some 20 years ago. Away from his country of birth
and with English far from fluent, he struggled with the new world
he threw himself into. His Hebrew type design expertise didn’t get
him far and, as his wife recalls, he grew especially quiet. “I lost my
language,” he remembers. Yet this uprooting acted as a powerful
creative force. Noma developed a visual vocabulary and created
a new “silent” language that needed no dictionary. The distance
from his native environment enabled him to see beyond the familiar,
to overcome the unconscious prejudices of custom and
convention, crafting a visual language that cuts through cultural
and linguistic barriers.
Noma’s art dislodges conventional ways of seeing and brings
together recognisable forms to propose a different take on reality.
This intellectual leap requires a space where the mind can
distance itself from the mundane and discover what hides in
plain sight. This space Noma finds in Highgate Woods, the ancient
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