There is a melancholy that hangs in the air amid The River That Was in the South, Sadik Kwaish Alfraji’s current exhibition at Ayyam Gallery. Followers of the artist’s work will be familiar with this lament because it populates most of his oeuvre. Through the elongated and often weeping figures that appear in his drawings and his poignant animations which are accompanied by haunting soundtracks, viewers of Alfraji’s work are left hanging somewhere between nostalgia and sorrow—a space infused with a poetic romanticism that is compelling.
The River That Was in the South, begins with a poem of the same name that describes part of Alfraji’s personal history. He writes about his grandfather’s generation, who lived suspended between the idyllic surroundings of the marshlands of southern Iraq and the toll of existing under a feudalist system. Then, he describes their migration: “The paths of migration glisten like gold painting a bright horizon”; but later, those paths become “burdened with misery and loss”.
