RIYAD NE‘MAH

Cautiously, Riyad was watching his heroes, some of them are marginal, negligent of their surrounding, others express their cautious awakening though their devious look. This crowd of heroes are the elements Riyad uses to build his worlds. He is a narrator, biased to his humanity. He creates out of them a carnival of colours through his swift interventions; a brush uneconomical in beautification as much it is concerned with creating sensitive colour relations that belong to his heroes, while they appear from his canvases with their own unique happiness. Riyad’s interests varied through the years. Harshness of his surroundings has not changed him, and marginal temptations have not chipped his humanity away, as long as he has known their political and social boundaries.

Absent friends passed like caravans, boats must be empty of them, gesture of return is in their eyes, so they could climb its memories, and spread worrisome within the layers of his painting canvas. Their faces are covered with dirt from a remote Iraq, after they crossed the borders, the barriers of forbidden things, and insults of intelligence police.

Riyad’s worlds are like sealed boxes, that hide the ability to think. There is someone who knows how he counts his days that got wasted between his Iraq and exile. He listens to the music of his colour without weariness, and he makes out of his silence eloquence so that our eyes become lanterns that embroider a noisier life.

Diaa Al Azzawi