Children of Adam

The series of works by Jawad al Malhi from 1999, entitled, The Children of Adam, presents to us with a family tree of descendants, of unknown figures, each individual with their gesture and pose for a portrait yet without a named identity that speaks to questions of our humanity and existence. This work created in 1999, seems to reflect on the contemporary state of being in the Arab world, in which a sense of loss and uncertainty is inscribed on the figures of people and in which individuals have become fragmented bodies and selves. The figures stand in silent gesture as witnesses. The artist comments saying, “Curiously we find that in the places we inhabit the traces of people and pasts that are unknown to us, return to us in our creativity and imagination.” The figures appear as remnants of the past traces of which the artists has unearthed, wiping away dust, to reveal the rich layered surface of the work, as though these figures have been lost in time. The Children of Adam represent an important body of work in Jawad al Malhi’s career, as they mark an important transition he made between stoic figures in his early works of the refugee camp inhabitants, to abstract motif of figures who represent individuals in position of observation, passivity and contemplation that are distinguished and characterized as relics of time, while at the same time reflecting on our contemporary condition of uncertainty and loss. (Mixed media on card, 1999)