Rafa al-Nasiri is remembered as the first artist in Iraq to specialise in graphic art. In the 1970s, Rafa al-Nasiri employed the Arabic letter in his works, as seen in Untitled (1971). He chose a diamond-shaped canvas, on which he painted strips of bright colours that extend diagonally across the canvas from one corner to another. On top of these strips, he applied thick black lines, which resemble Arabic calligraphic forms. The artist used straight and curved lines to create a composition whose abstract style recalls the decorative patterns from the Arabic– Islamic art practice. Rafa al-Nasiri and his peers considered the use of the Arabic script to be the foremost artistic expression that they inherited from the Arab–Islamic civilisation. Yet, the artist gives importance only to the shapes of the Arabic letters, rather than to their literal meaning. These shapes corresponded with his experimentation in abstraction, which served to reconnect the Iraqi and Arab communities with their common artistic heritage.
This is the first time the work of Rafa al Nasiri is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Arthur Debsi
