The significance of an exhibition like this one lies in the fact that it gives us a glimpse at the trajectory of an inspiration and enables us to notice, from the beginning, that it is about work in progress. Not static and satisfied with its autonomy, but questioning at every turn; not by a voluntary action through which Hind deliberately rejects the plateau reached, but rather through an inner listening, a sustained attention to what is happening on the canvas, to what gives it life, to what follows next …
Very early on, Hind Nasser wanted to render the harmony of the landscape of Jordan where stones alternate with the leafy trees, the greenery of the vegetation and the rough terrain, without, however, neglecting the formidable natural architectures which, in the South of the country, raise their forms above the desert whose memory is present here and there. Drawing on the motif, in China ink, wash, and pencils, the artist expresses at the same time a serene sensitivity and, in their precision, structures that will guide her: especially in her pastels and her first paintings where she tackles color; she experiments with different media and, soon enough, avoids representation. Thus, will it appear, on paper and later on canvas, the unknown; not neo-geometric forms, but, quite distinct in their contours and their colors, real biological forms fully alive, just like those observed under a microscope; they are not the impulses of some volcanic magma, but organic tissues of broad trace, a powerful model that springs from the depth of the being. These forms in cold tones, blues and greens, and colors, are tangled above the warm tones of the spectrum. Their ease is absolute.
In 1990, Hind is faced in Petra with a mineral universe; the rocks create, through their masses, narrow columns of shadow and light that they seem to crush, like some fighting gestalts.
A little later this same year, a column of fire springs between the walls of the mountain: cadmium yellow, it repels the walls, bursts out from among the blue flanks whose neither base nor summit are seen, only their upward movement.
With deep intuition, Fahrelnissa Zeid said that through the irruption of this yellow bordering orange, a new space is created. The earth yawned, indeed. It is a symbol that reminds one of Yellowstone, the first of the National Parks of America, north of the Rockies: one feels he is there, at the origins of the world; the earth and the sky appear to be set afire by this yellow; is it gold or sulfur? It is clearly the color of the sun, the source of life. In fact, a new period is asserting itself in this work: the complementarity of the forms helps them exalt each other (the reds are opposed to the greens, the yellows to the purples). The blues are not cold and, as in Dürer, red or carnation fill the sky. The space is rendered through a glowing yellow. The year ‘92 is that of a harmonious organization of forms, thanks to the colors.
“As we paint, we draw,” Cezanne wrote, specifying: “The more the color is harmonious, the more precise the drawing is. When the color is the richest, the form reaches its fullness “. And so in 1992-93, one wonders where these creatures spring from. From the matrix earth, no doubt; the first, all covered with flames, are called “The Protector”; like protective genies, their muscles protrude, their attitude is domineering, their deep blue color raises them over a flamboyant yellow horizon. Most often alone, they can double or even triple without losing their power, their momentum. Some, as if wrapped in a broad mantle of feathers, are reminiscent of Max Ernst’s Loplop, hanging over petrified forests; others, more static, seem to gather their strengths. They all have a being.
Thus the anticipated birth is accomplished. Demiurge, Hind has created figures in three dimensions, like statuary – but alive! Téralogie, perhaps, a “Gestalt” which is monstrous only due to its unusual character. It is the “unseen”, like all true creation, a disconcerting reality.
At this point in our reading, let us look back: are not all Hind’s gestures on the canvas sketches of these muscles, do not they herald their mazes, their meanders, their arabesques?
What instinct guided the artist in her night? Does not an impulse like this come from the depths of her race? Was it not the drive that animated the creators of pre-Islamic nudes traced in the desert castles? Was it not the instinct that pushed Fahrelnissa to her cosmic compositions loaded with premonitions?
The international vocabulary of art will thus one day become richer and claim these original creatures that already no longer belong to their author; Hind knows it; destiny expatriates its children and will make them defy time.
And thus, as if afraid of the independence of her creatures, Hind feels the need to question herself: from their mould, she extracts the elements that help her create a puzzle of forms.
“Peace in the process of creation” she calls a canvas painted in 1994. The surfaces of the colors are alive: she knows, like Poliakoff, that a color does not expand uniformly, that it must vibrate with all the underlying hues that make it up and that are to be guessed. She does not rest and paints a canvas en camaїeu: tired! a mysterious movement seizes the broad tracing of the brush, some kraken is lurking at the bottom of the water!
So goes a talented painter, driven by an instinct as imperious as that of motherhood. To stop at a happy period is impossible if one has some lucidity. Probably without knowing it, Hind puts into practice the deep thought of the French philosopher who has just disappeared, Gilles Deleuze; in his book on Bacon, he wrote: “In art, in painting as in music, it is not a question of reproducing or inventing forms, but of capturing forces …”
Translated by Nelly Lama