The Arab Spring Notebook by Ibrahim El-Salahi is one of the artist’s key works and one of the most important cultural responses to the Arab Spring.
A Pictorial Parallel to the Arab Spring
History it seems does repeat itself from time to time. With time passing a great deal is forgotten, a little bit is achieved, an improvement is made here and there in the passage of humanity and the rights of humankind.
Nothing is yet perfect.
Religious stories tell us that Adam, in the Garden of Eden, was persuaded by an evil body to desire to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of power and immortality so as to live forever and be in control of his own destiny. That burning desire drove him and Eve to have what they were not supposed to have, bringing their downfall from Paradise.
Tyrants do the same. They and their regimes wish to live long, controlling their own destinies and those of others under them. But from time to time some wake up when they realise they have had enough. Fear gone from their minds, they rise collectively to challenge tyranny and demand their full rights, by force if peaceful means do not work out.
Let us always remember what happened to a young man who was trying to make a living by selling vegetables when the authorities of his own country denied him a license. He felt so desperate that he set himself alight. That incident was the straw that broke the masses’ back. They rose in anger, and in a few days’ time the regime collapsed, the tyrant ruler of the country had to flee for safety, and tyranny crumbled with the fall of the tyrant. What happened in that country triggered the Arab Spring throughout the Middle East, toppling and promising to topple yet more corrupt regimes and shaking the ground underneath some who considered themselves unshakeable.
Power, as we all know, breeds greed and greed breeds corruption, injustice, prejudice and inequality. And inequality leads to oppression, and revolt.
Not so long ago uprisings took place in a number of Middle Eastern countries, demanding democratic rule, equality and justice, but unfortunately they were aborted prematurely by internal elements, with the help of external interests claiming the need for stability and peace in the region.
As a picturemaker I observe what is happening. I relate the past to the present and produce a picture that portrays the drama of human life in a visual form. This jumble of sketches has been the daily result of listening and following the events of the Arab Spring as they unfolded day after day in newspapers and on TV screens. I do not claim that they represent what is actually happening on the ground wherever it is taking place. They are just what came to my mind, and all I did was put them down in pen and ink on the paper of a little notebook given to me by my nephew’s children on my 81st birthday.
As the drawings are of such a small size I sometimes use a magnifying glass to see what has come out in them, and when I focus on a few details in the pictures, images appear to speak something different from what I intended for them in the first place. This led me to think of projecting the works in a different field, perhaps on a wider screen. That has to wait to be seen.
Ibrahim El-Salahi
03 November 2011
Please click HERE to view Ibrahim El-Salahi in conversation with Morgan Quaintance discussing the Arab Spring Diaries on the BBC Culture show, 24 July 2013.
Art Newspaper: 'Dashed Hopes of the Arab Spring' by Anny Shaw.