Hellal Zoubir : A Personal Mythology

Overview

This exhibition presents a range of paintings and drawings illustrating various aspects of the artist’s research and practice between the 1970s and the present. At the heart of the exhibition is a group of eight recent oil paintings, created during the times of the Covid pandemic in 2020. Reflecting the unprecedented conditions of lockdowns, when our globalised world came to the standstill, these works are nonetheless to be inscribed in the ever present questions of definition of artist’s own style, and beyond, of definition of Algerian art. At the heart of the dialectic between appropriation and rejection of Western models, Hellal Zoubir invents a dream-like iconography of fantastic beings, apparently disconnected from any concerns with reality and daily life.

In the words of Malika Dorbani Bouabdellah, director at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Algiers during the 1990s, these paintings “Fabulous, hybrid, mythological, mystical, humorous (…) remind of Boccaccio’s Decameron. Creatures, half-angels and half-humans, recognisable to all, dwell in close proximity, without any hierarchy, revealed by obvious details originating in one’s intimate, everyday universe, and by fundamental discoveries, in situ. The Sahara, Africa, Egypt, readings, narratives, the Thousand and One Nights, books, sacred and profane, love poetry of ancient Arabia, bring to the present concealed memories.”

In this magical bestiary, hybrid beings simultaneously appear familiar and mysterious. In Licorne, [The Unicorn], an unidentified woman is portrayed hidden, covered with a black mask. A skull of an animal - perhaps referring to the unicorn of the title, or rather to the cow symbolising the Egyptian goddess Hathor - reveals the identity of the sitter. The symbolic mother epitomising joy, dance and music, love and sexuality, expresses the antique Egyptian conception of femininity. Bejewelled and covered with stars - Hathor was believed to be a celestial deity, and was often represented wearing concentric necklaces - she sports what seems to be an afro hair style, surprisingly matching the black mask that suddenly comes alive. And indeed, Hathor was connected to Nubia, part of sub-Saharan Africa at times ruled by Egypt. Her most common attribute was a sun disk framed by cow’s horns. Hence the black mask, that of an African, may stand for the face of the Sun, origin of all life. A plastic shoe and a pair of sunglasses remind the viewer that we are in the 21st century, nonetheless. While matters of gender, sexuality, race, tradition and modernity emerge from this marvellous painting, the question of origins appears paramount: yes, we are all Africans!

Among the paintings produced in 2020, most portray enigmatic faces and gazes directly addressing the viewer. Challenging our presence in front of them, they seem to question the sense of our lives. Their magnetic presence is achieved by exquisite painting, using deep, often saturated mineral colours. While the balanced compositions seem to reference some classical paintings, an ambiguous, almost surrealistic aura emanates from these works. Hellal’s answer to decades of questioning lies in this magistral expression of his own artistic freedom, liberated from political and social pressures of colonial and postcolonial conflicts, escaping the necessity of positioning his creations within any narrative of Western art and, ultimately, freed from oppressive institutional frameworks commanding artists to contribute to political projects.

Looking at the ensemble of presented works, including a series of paintings created in 1979 and a series of earlier drawings, it becomes clear that Hellal Zoubir has for long attempted to uncover and express the mystery of the human condition. The discovery of the essay Listen, Little Man! by the influential Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, nourished the artist’s interest in the portrayal of human suffering and the possibility of emancipation, to be put in the context of colonial liberation and postcolonial wars.

These aspects are clearly perceptible in some of the paintings and drawings dating to the 1970s. The painting Escape (1979) depicts a human shape dramatically set against a white web enclosing the exit of an undefined dark building. The title suggests the ultimate liberation, although the artist chose to show the moment of struggle against the imposed physical and, undoubtedly, also mental imprisonment. The drawing La course désespérée, écoute petit homme (1969) [Desperate Pursuit, Listen, Little Man!] explicitly poses the question of the purpose of human being and suffering, while making obvious the artist’s inspiration by the above-mentioned text by Reich.

Hellal Zoubir’s oeuvre lies at the intersection of many fault lines criss-crossing contemporary art and today’s world. With his magistral series of paintings produced in 2020, a personal mythology expressing the complexity of human existence emerges as the artist’s ultimate answer to these concerns.