Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro
de la Prensa-Baszn ()zeti
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Before 1993 he had not even known the
name of the artist who painted it. Rostam
painstakingly rèproduced
the image and presented
his work. It was rejected
on the pretext that the
artist was "not a great
master". The painter
whose work Aghala had
copied was Gustav Klimt,
an Austrian (1862-1918)
of the famous "Secessionist
School", who painted the world in its
"feminine appearance".
Between 1989-1990, Aghala discovered
another discipline: he was called up for the
army. He deserted after the Iraqi army was
defeated in Kuwait. For three months he
locked himself in a room, and worked on
paintings inspired by the Surrealists. The
three years that followedwere difficult:
Rostam survived by selling books on the
streets of Baghdad and working in factories...
He was so poor he could not afford
the materials to paine and so depressed that
again he tried to take his own life.
In 1993 his life took a new - happyturn.
An American journalist he met by
chance bought one of his paintings for $400,
a fortune for the impoverished Rostam. The
same journalist also gave him a book about
the work of Gustav Klimt and Rostam dis-.
covered the identity of the painter he had
copied, some years before. He also learned
that despite his information to the contrary,
this painter was not an unknown artist, but a
master painter worthy of his admiration and
a credible source of inspiration.
Since becoming a teenager Rostam confesses
to frequently falling in love with girls
- some of whom he did not even speak to
- but in 1995 he met Goulala .and this, he
decided, was the real thing.
However, Goulala's father, a businessman
from Suleimania, did not want his daughter
involved with "a colourist"j a simple villager
from an unknown family. In despair Rostam
made plans to leave his homeland for
Europe, like so many young people in Iraqi
Kurdistan. At this point Hero Talabani, the
wife of Jelal Talabani, the powerful PUK
leader intervened on Rostam's behalf.
Goulalàs father eventually gave in and agreed
the couple could marry.
A new life began for Rostam, he.was in
love and happily married to a beautiful
Many detailsof
Aghala's paintings
reveal intriguing
anomalies that are
wide open to
interpretation
woman, from an affluene family, who would
became his favourite model. But Rostam still
had a problem. Women
are one of the main
themes of his work but he
Qnnotpaintrrommemory,
he needs a model,
which raises many problems
in the very traditional
Kurdish society. He
loves to paint Goulala,
who was now fully available
as a model and appears in many of his
paintings but he needed other sources of
inspiration in order to vary his work.
Goulala has a sister whom Rostam also liked
to paine. But he admits that Goulala is quite
jealous and he has problems if he looks for
models outside the family circle.
The Kurdish elite started buying his
paintings: Jelal and Hero Talabani bought
some of his large paintings to decorate their
dining room in Qala Tchwalan. PUK minister
Adnan Mufti bought canvases for his
office and home. But Rostam's clients are
mainly foreigners - the UN and NGO
workers, and the press, and it is a an irregular
clieneele. Rostam's problem is that the
Kurdish people rich enough to buy his
paintings have little esteem for his "folklorist"
and "coulourist" style: "I could just as
weil hang a kilim on my wall", says a
wealthy businessman. Such a comment
reflects a simplistic view of. RosJam's paineings
and a failure to look b~yo'nd their
immediate colourful appearance.
In one of his paintings, Shvan (the Shepherd),
a young woman wears the traditional
dress of the Kurdish shepherd. She is beautiful
but obviously unhappy: two big drops on her
mantle symbolise her tears 3;fidat the same
time ~e womb. On her shoulder two strange
birds are mating upside down. A butterfly
hovers above her. What does it all mean?
"One day I went to the village of Tak
Tak, near Kay Sinjak", says Rostam, "and I
met a very pretty woman shepherd: she
could not bear children, so her husband
made her a shepherd. All the time, while
watching her sheep, she was dreaming of sex
and babies - the butterfly symbolizes her
dreams, and the birds areupside down
because they Qnnot make love". The story
of this woman does not end here, explains
Rostam: her estranged husband married a
second wife, who was also unable to bear
children. After undergoing t~ts at the hospital
it was discovered that it was he who
was sterile.
In another painting, Anfa!, a bearded old
man sits in a meadow full of red poppies, with
a young woman, his granddaughter, behind
him, and a steep mountain .in the background.
The old man has lived ,through Anfal
(a terrible campaign against the Kurds in
1988 which claimed 180,000 Victims) and is
recounting his memories to his grand daughter.
"The landsQpe is beautiful", says Rostam.
"But because nature is beautiful does not
mean you have a beautifullife. Our country
was beautiful when Anfal happened and Anfal
could happen again". Many details of Aghalàs
paineings reveal intriguing anomalies that are
wide open to interpretation: the meadow is
empty without any sign of grazing Qrue; the
old man's rifle is half hidden behind him. The
pigeons on the tree don't look at each other.
The mountain is bare, without any sign of
shrub or tree. The sky is not blue but red. The
peacock, which towers above the girl and her
grandfather, has no feathers.
So who is the real Rosriun? The happy,
laughing painter with a palette of luxurious
colours or the bitter unhappy Kurd who
cannot forget his people's pain and the
uncertainty of their destiny? "My life is like
my painting", Rostarn reponds, "I am making
experiences......
TheMiddle East May 2003
59