lɐʎƎ ᴉl∀
  • No Home
  • News I hate news
  • Contact
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • ​Texts - reviews
  • Publications
  • Index
    • The Blue Ink Pocket, and
    • An Indefinite appearance or two walls and
    • 6x9 doesn’t fit everything and
    • Don't let the beautiful colors fool you, who would draw Goofy inside the rooms of grownups? And
    • Where do the walls of the museum go when they are forgotten? And
    • Other details were released from under the hair, embedded by power on the paper's surface, which bore the oil and color. The paper was transmigrated into the canvas's ghost. This occurred with the help of volatile eyebrow's scissors, snipped by the han
    • From the head's knoll. And
    • Berlin's drawing's pad and
    • a depiction of things at the back of my head. And
    • Entry into this household is strictly prohibited under any circumstances, as is the construction or alteration of furniture or the construction of a new home or project, unless written permission is granted by the owner of the blue bag, and
    • A Smoking Paper, But Without Smoke, and
    • where does a thought go when it's forgotten? And
    • No Part Of This Book May Be Reproduced, In Any Way, By Photocopying, Recording, Or Otherwise, Except With The Prior Written Consent Of The Publisher, and
    • Behind The Sun
    • Painting Size 80x60cm
      • My nightmare
    • In One Direction, From a Steady Angle
    • Tonight’s Programme
    • Chapter 1
      • 5 minutes lucid dreams and deep sleep
      • Oasis Behaviour
      • View from the roof of my farm
      • Tourist trips in our farm
      • Add Friend So You Can Speak With the President
      • The Body’s Heavy Box
      • The Body's Autumn
  • Solo exhibitions
    • In the head's sunrise
    • In the head's dusk
  • PORTFOLIO PDF
  • No Home
  • News I hate news
  • Contact
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • ​Texts - reviews
  • Publications
  • Index
    • The Blue Ink Pocket, and
    • An Indefinite appearance or two walls and
    • 6x9 doesn’t fit everything and
    • Don't let the beautiful colors fool you, who would draw Goofy inside the rooms of grownups? And
    • Where do the walls of the museum go when they are forgotten? And
    • Other details were released from under the hair, embedded by power on the paper's surface, which bore the oil and color. The paper was transmigrated into the canvas's ghost. This occurred with the help of volatile eyebrow's scissors, snipped by the han
    • From the head's knoll. And
    • Berlin's drawing's pad and
    • a depiction of things at the back of my head. And
    • Entry into this household is strictly prohibited under any circumstances, as is the construction or alteration of furniture or the construction of a new home or project, unless written permission is granted by the owner of the blue bag, and
    • A Smoking Paper, But Without Smoke, and
    • where does a thought go when it's forgotten? And
    • No Part Of This Book May Be Reproduced, In Any Way, By Photocopying, Recording, Or Otherwise, Except With The Prior Written Consent Of The Publisher, and
    • Behind The Sun
    • Painting Size 80x60cm
      • My nightmare
    • In One Direction, From a Steady Angle
    • Tonight’s Programme
    • Chapter 1
      • 5 minutes lucid dreams and deep sleep
      • Oasis Behaviour
      • View from the roof of my farm
      • Tourist trips in our farm
      • Add Friend So You Can Speak With the President
      • The Body’s Heavy Box
      • The Body's Autumn
  • Solo exhibitions
    • In the head's sunrise
    • In the head's dusk
  • PORTFOLIO PDF
Ali Eyal 1994 ​© All Rights Reserved​

In the Head's Dusk

Saw Center, Ottawa, December 1, 2022 - March 4, 2023.
Curated by Amin Alsaden.
Press Release 
​
Ali Eyal is known for works that merge the ordinary with the surreal. His artistic practice contemplates the elusive complexity, and at times nightmarish absurdity, of this world, in which our lives, stories and desires are inexorably entangled. Rooted in childhood memories, his polychromatic fabulations negotiate harrowing events that unfolded in his hometown of Baghdad, particularly following the devastating 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq. By underlining how the past informs the present, how joy can be born out of suffering, and how traumas of conflict haunt local and diasporic communities alike, Eyal addresses themes that resonate with a humanity confronting multiple existential crises today.

In his first solo exhibition in Canada, Eyal presents a constellation of new and existing works, including paintings, videos and sculptural installations, that shed light on how Iraq’s turmoil captures dynamics that overtly or surreptitiously shape our current global reality. On the twentieth anniversary of the invasion—one of the most flagrant examples of neo-colonialism in recent history—his work raises questions about the immense cost of the world’s voracious appetite for oil. The price includes an unspeakable toll in human lives, planetary environmental degradation, and dispossession, displacement and decimation of entire cultural traditions. Although based on personal experience, the artist’s work also elucidates how the occupation of Iraq points to ideological rivalries between capitalism and other worldviews, as well as imperialism’s endless wars, the repercussions of which go far beyond Southwest Asia (or the “Middle East”), often the casualty of incessant Western military adventures.

Through intense introspection, Eyal invokes the challenges of representing the unfathomable scale of the tragedies brought about by armed conflict, which obscure the more nuanced and tender aspects of the survivors’ lives. Poetry coexists with horror in his canvases, and an unsettling anxiety is evinced by the nonsensical logic, pervasive fragmentation and dense agglomerations found across his practice. The anatomical, an allegory for carnage, intermingles with the botanical, conjuring an alternative world of shadows, and the artist’s way of keeping difficult memories alive. Lodged deeply into the unconscious—in the head’s dusk, straddling that fertile zone between waking and sleep—his work is ultimately about perseverance, an insistence on bringing to public awareness narratives that have been concealed or suppressed. By giving agency to rebellious recollections, which refuse to be forgotten, Eyal deploys imagination as resistance.

Amin Alsaden


Autumn Solo Show, and. 2022

No Part Of This Book May Be Reproduced, In Any Way, By Photocopying, Recording, Or Otherwise, Except With The Prior Written Consent Of The Publisher, and 2019

Look what happened to this work when it traveled to Ottawa! 

The Blue Ink Pocket, and. 2022
Video work
Duration: approx. 11 Min.
Language: Arabic and with english subtitles.


Installation view.

In the abounded garden, a match played by the national team and. 2022
Despite the irritation of the lacrimal gland, they won. Senseless tears, cold tears. Due to facing the heat of burning wood from around the farm. Your sky is frozen tear. I don’t know the dimensions.

The secret of my eyebrow and. 2022

Other details were released from my eyebrow showing me the memory of the future. I watched the clouds. A cloud arrived from whatsapp Oil and ink on the bark of my tree​

Berlin Drawing's Pad and. 2020

Photo by Ava Margueritte.

Picture
  • No Home
  • News I hate news
  • Contact
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • ​Texts - reviews
  • Publications
  • Index
    • The Blue Ink Pocket, and
    • An Indefinite appearance or two walls and
    • 6x9 doesn’t fit everything and
    • Don't let the beautiful colors fool you, who would draw Goofy inside the rooms of grownups? And
    • Where do the walls of the museum go when they are forgotten? And
    • Other details were released from under the hair, embedded by power on the paper's surface, which bore the oil and color. The paper was transmigrated into the canvas's ghost. This occurred with the help of volatile eyebrow's scissors, snipped by the han
    • From the head's knoll. And
    • Berlin's drawing's pad and
    • a depiction of things at the back of my head. And
    • Entry into this household is strictly prohibited under any circumstances, as is the construction or alteration of furniture or the construction of a new home or project, unless written permission is granted by the owner of the blue bag, and
    • A Smoking Paper, But Without Smoke, and
    • where does a thought go when it's forgotten? And
    • No Part Of This Book May Be Reproduced, In Any Way, By Photocopying, Recording, Or Otherwise, Except With The Prior Written Consent Of The Publisher, and
    • Behind The Sun
    • Painting Size 80x60cm
      • My nightmare
    • In One Direction, From a Steady Angle
    • Tonight’s Programme
    • Chapter 1
      • 5 minutes lucid dreams and deep sleep
      • Oasis Behaviour
      • View from the roof of my farm
      • Tourist trips in our farm
      • Add Friend So You Can Speak With the President
      • The Body’s Heavy Box
      • The Body's Autumn
  • Solo exhibitions
    • In the head's sunrise
    • In the head's dusk
  • PORTFOLIO PDF