Uprising (2016) by FAISEL LAIBI SAHIDalloul Art Foundation
Faisel Laibi Sahi's early tutelage was under pioneering modern Iraqi artists such as Faek Hassan, Hafidh El Droubi, and Atta Sabri, and especially Jewad Selim's concept of istilham al-turath, seeking inspiration from Iraqi heritage through engagement with European techniques.
The revolutionary artist calls for justice and freedom in his acrylic on canvas painting Uprising, 2016. Inspired by the 1991 Kurdish revolt in Iraq, it echoes Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People,1830.
Similar to Delacroix’s personified liberty, it features a woman with visible breasts leading. She moves forward while a crowd of raged men and women follow.
While Liberty holds the French flag in Delacroix’s painting, a nicely dressed young man, possibly an intellectual, holds a red communist flag emerging from within the crowd in Sahi's picture.
Sahi’s Liberty is preceded by three allegorical animal figures appropriated from ancient mythology and modern Iraqi art.
The defiant lioness in ancient Assyrian palace reliefs as part of The royal Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal, the Sumerian sacred bull, and Jewad Selim’s horse, a significant element of Nasb al-Hurriyah or Freedom Monument in Baghdad.
An artist with an eye for detail and a talent for balancing whimsy and sobriety, Faisel Laibi Sahi combines the past and present in his compositions with impeccable painterly skill.
From the full biography of Faisel Laibi Sahi by Wafa Roz
