Osman Kader Ahmed
Statement
 Drawing from memory is a 'process' of 'discovery' - like Jackson Pollock's paintings - it cannot
develop in isolation without 'discipline' and 'critical reflection', and without 'interaction' with the 'cultural space' around it - such
convictions motivated me to study at the College, but the directions my drawings and research took were beyond my anticipation. The MA Drawing
Course empowered me to explore and practice not just varied drawing methods, including printmaking,
The emergence and evolution of new ways of working:
My drawings are mutations of shocking impressions derived from disturbing memories (no longer confined to my unconscious but have become
a part of my daily life).
I have always been inspired and influenced by Goya's 'Disasters of War series' and the 'Third of May 1808', and by Picasso's 'Guernica' (1937).
The Baathists' total elimination of human life, landscape and cultural symbols, and the Kurds' heroic but silent resistance that resulted in Saddam's
savage assault on more than 4500 villages, were not much different from the human circumstances that inspired Goya's etchings 200 years ago.
I have been particularly impressed and affected by Kathe Kollwitz's lithographs, the 'photographic' impressions of the suffering of the German
working class; also by the works of the white South African artist William Kentridge: the strong presence of racial, urban and industrial
segregation: images/elements that stand as disturbing reminders that question guilt, poverty and exploitation; works that reflect Kentridge's
own social and political preoccupation, close contact and interaction in South Africa under the Apartheid.
My research on artists with equivalent art practice involving the subject of genocide and ethnic cleansing, not only exposed me to their influences
and the fact that their works were products of real contacts with the socio-cultural and political environment of their time and that they did not
stand by and ignore oppression, but that their creative works, regardless of their cultural/geographical settings or applied techniques, equally
affect and disturb us. Most of them are relatively new to me; they were introduced to me during the course; I was fascinated by their line of
thinking and by their influence on me as my work progressed.
Since witnessing the genocide in 1988 every drawing has been a renewal of my pledge; every tableau is a meeting place where memories and flash backs spring up to life out of chaos - it has been a rendezvous with life and death where the victims' powerless presence signifies their absence and their silence, the suffocated voice of a stateless nation mutilated and forced into unmarked mass graves or forced into exile: masses of the massacred, tortured and terrorised men, women and children whose culture and natural rights to their homeland and to a dignified life had been denied.
Although the energy that produced a line or an image had its roots in the genocide, new influences had also begun making their impact on my work.
Through experimentation I have depicted apocalyptic scenes where landscape signifies the victims' cultural identity; they are inseparable and
complement each other; I have recorded unidentifiable faces of the victims and of their costume and landscape, their anguish, hopes and their
defenceless figures lost in a dehumanised world. 'Mutation' had become less concerned with detail: it was no longer an imprint of a hand, a finger
or part of a body in an unfinished sketch manner, an imprisoned mass of humanity had changed:
Most of my drawings stem from my memory, my experience as a child eyewitness, and the ensuing years of political and cultural repression culminating
in the horrendous mass executions of thousands of men, women and children and the destruction of my homeland. These events (my personal circumstances
and those of others) have had a profound effect on my life as an artist and given me a continual source of often uncomfortable imagery but nevertheless
a powerful reason for working. A drawing is not a realistic representation of what has been witnessed but an 'impression' of it created by impulse.
I am 'surrounded' by my drawings and by the memories of these events. They are constants in my imagination, shadows in my daily thoughts and echoes in
my mind. I strive to make a body of work that not only records the genocide (the Anfal) and a world of flashbacks and dreams, but simultaneously to
explore pain and feeling through this creative process. Drawing is a kind of 'catharsis', a meditation, a therapeutic reliving of the pain and forces
that have been pushed into the unconscious.
During my studies I learned that the artist like any other human being is bound to 'repress' certain painful events and memories.
The unconscious forces a later emergence as images are transferred from the unconscious to the conscious mind, revealing a deeper insight into
the 'unconscious' and affecting the work from inception to completion. Inevitably, the finished image is not premeditated - 'intuition' is the
most dominant force while drawing. The artist draws on 'impression' of the event/reality. The results are mysterious and unclear and are often
more terrifying than the factual.
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