Discomfort and awe at Athar Jaber's first Dubai exhibition

Vestiges features a series of stone sculptures showing twisted human faces and body parts that have been severed

Vestiges at Ayyam Gallery marks Athar Jaber's debut exhibition in Dubai. Victor Besa / The National

Iraqi-Dutch artist Athar Jaber is marking his first solo exhibition in Dubai with a series of stone sculptures that evoke as much discomfort as awe.

Busts show human faces with features that have been pummeled in or twisted out of place. Limbs, torsos and heads emerge with Hellenistic grace and detail from marble blocks that have otherwise been left coarse and unfinished. The body parts in Jaber’s sculptures are severed and writhing. For him, they bare the weight of the modern world.

The sculptures in the exhibition Vestiges, at Ayyam Gallery, are not new, with some having been produced as far back as 2014. Yet, Jaber says the exhibition presents the work that best embody his artistic intentions.

“This is the work that I compromised the least,” he tells The National. “I feel they best represent me and the message I want to convey. I moved to the UAE just over a year ago. With Ayyam, we thought of doing a show.

“Galleries usually want to show the latest work, right? But I don't have a latest bodywork that is ready. I'm new to the local environment and the public still needs to get to know me. The work here is maybe 10 years old but it gives a good idea of what I stand for.”

To understand Jaber’s work, it is perhaps crucial to juxtapose it to the tenets of classical period Greek sculpture. After all, it was by copying ancient Greek works that Jaber honed his craft as a student in Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

The sculptors of ancient Greece, specifically those who worked in the classical period between 510 to 323 BCE, often tried to represent the human body in its idealised form. This was likely influenced by Plato’s theory of forms. The philosopher posited that there was a higher realm of existence that housed the perfect version of all forms.

The chairs, apples and horses of this world were flawed and shadowy representations of the forms that existed in Plato’s realm. This also applied to human bodies. The classical Greek sculptors chipped at marble slabs with that realm in mind, trying to achieve the ideal human form.

In many ways, Athar has adopted an antithetical approach. Instead of rising towards Plato’s realm of beauty and perfection, the artist is more interested in diving inward, using body parts to explore how we interiorise the ugliness of the world today.

“It speaks more to a state of being,” he says. “An interior one of anxiety, of uncertainty, of unclear identity. I won't speak for everyone, but I think many of us feel that, right?”

Born in Rome to Iraqi parents Afifa Aleiby and Jaber Alwan, both of whom are celebrated artists, Jaber has lived in several countries in Europe, as well as brief stints in Yemen and Russia.

The experience, he says, has helped solidify an identity that goes beyond geographic borders. Yet, witnessing from afar the turmoil that has affected Iraq and the wider Middle East has left an indelible mark on his perception of the world – a mark he has sought to transpose in stone.

“People are sometimes disturbed or shocked by my work,” he says. “But then look at what we have been fed through the media. Seeing what we've seen, I can't make beautiful things that just embellish and adorn.”

Jaber says that he suspects there are many who feel the same way, and an idealised human form doesn’t serve as an authentic reflection of this widespread interiority of anxiety at the state of the world.

“People need to see something that they recognise in themselves,” he says. “I understand that many have seen enough ugliness, but if they see just beautiful sculptures, they feel even more detached from reality. You need to see something that represents you.”

Jaber’s work also addresses the margins between beauty and ugliness, creation and destruction. Several of his stone works brings to mind the destruction of Iraqi artefacts by Isis forces in 2014, especially with their beaten and disfigured pieces.

“I realised they were using the same tools that I used to create to destroy,” he says. “They used the hammer and chisel, the angle grinder, the drill, all the tools that I use.”

One piece, however, stands out in the way it emboldens the thin line between creation and destruction. If militants were using his tools to destroy art, he would use their tools of destruction to create. The piece of marble, vaguely resembling a head on a plinth, was formed by using a gun. Sixty four bullets were fired at the piece to bring it to form.

The process was filmed and can be seen in the entrance to the exhibition. The work, Jaber says, presents a strange contrast. “There is the contradiction of the beauty of the images,” he says.

“But it’s something horrible that is happening. Like when you see buildings being demolished. It’s horrible but we look and keep looking at them. There’s that discomfort, where you’re watching something terrible but enjoying it.”

Vestiges is running at Ayyam Gallery until April 1