Issam Kourbaj On Home and the Fabric of Life
‘Come upstairs’, Issam Kourbaj tells me, ‘I’ll talk to you about something personal and poignant that I haven’t talked about in a long time.’ It’s a short walk upstairs to the research space at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, where you can find books, catalogues, and film on show as part of Urgent Archive, the largest solo show for the artists’ work to date.
‘These were made by my grandmother,’ Kourbaj is pointing at grainy black and white images, ‘out of old clothes. She used to make quilts - in the mountains, we used to use them in the mountains to protect ourselves from the cold weather. But if you look at them, they look like very beautiful abstract paintings. So, without her knowing, she influenced me as a painter.’
Although Kourbaj is not an artist who works predominantly with fabric, as a media the use of textiles and related ephemera is a significant strand of his work. ‘I find material and convert it, repurpose it to speak a new language. This is a bridge between me and the past’ - and, yes, the present’. Painting, making and working with objects become a way of restoring connection to Syria. A crossover of everyday life with art, often with startling, emotive impact.
Image and image above: Issam Kourbaj: Urgent Archive at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge. Photo by Jo Underhill.
‘Hidden in this artistic lament for people who are forcibly uprooted, is a universal reflection evoked for me by the ephemeral materials he has chosen to express how fragile life is, however fixed it seems for a time.’ The Reverend Lucy Winkett commented, describing Kourbaj’s work on Radio 4, Thought for the Day, in 2015.
This fragile beauty sings throughout Kourbaj’s work. Inspiring loss, inviting hope. Stand out installation, includes a repurposed damaged tent that can no longer give shelter, spans a gallery wall in Kettle’s Yard - Our exile grows a day longer, and a day closer is our return. Dates are woven into the fabric as an everyday record of the uprising in Syria started on 15 March 2011 – contributed to by participants in Cambridge and all over the UK.
Aged from twenties, up to their seventies, from different disciplines – from weavers to textiles lovers, ‘all women’, Kourbaj says. ‘The seed has an agency’, Kourbaj explains, ‘but, equally, the tent has another agency.’ Thousands of dates are threaded with red thread, for visual contrast. ‘The idea is that a seed is an archive,’ he says. Not just art, but also a record of social history, a re-weaving of Syrian cultural heritage.
A second repurposed tent, The Map of Absence is installed in sister show, You are Not You and Home is Not Home at the Heong Gallery; punctuated with holes that let ‘dreams’ slip away, but also let the ‘light in’, Kourbaj says.
It’s this poetic range of art and the everyday that weaves both shows with an uncompromising beauty. ‘Syria is very small, but so diverse,’ Kourbaj explains. ‘I come from the South where there were lots of people weaving. My mother was one of them.’
Issam Kourbaj: Urgent Archive at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge. Photo by Jo Underhill
According to the Syrian Textiles Heritage Archive, weaving in Syria is an ‘art’. Most famous in Damascus, for its silk, which Kourbaj describes as a visible part of the landscape of the city where he lived while training as an artist at the Institute of Fine Arts. ‘In Aleppo, there is silk weaving, too. When I lived in Damascus you see people weaving silk, Damaskian silk.’ So, it’s perhaps unsurprising that fabric often interweaves with his work, appearing as bold statement on the experiences caught in the Syria crisis, or impacted by conflict.
You see this in ‘Sole-less’, exhibited in Gallery 2, in Kettle’s Yard as part of Urgent Archive, transformed, as if Kourbaj’s studio. On the surface, an innocuous collection of fabric shoes whose soles have been removed – mirroring moves by police who cut the shoe soles of migrant children arriving to France. ‘A brutal psychological act – I wanted to make a statement about this,’ he tells me. This subversion of the everyday, whether working with the ‘skin’ of canvas, or the springs of mattresses – are acts of honesty that strip humanity down to the truth – however unsettling.
It's an unnerving quality, revealing fresh perspectives to crisis at a time when so many are at risk of becoming desensitised – and the truth is hard to hear. ‘I’ve taken the fabric out, it’s almost like it’s revealing its struggle. The fabric is like a skin,’ Kourbaj says of installation Fallen Springs, the metal starkly unapologetic under the gallery light.
Issam Kourbaj: Urgent Archive at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge. Photo by Jo Underhill.
At the Heong Gallery, is another installation made from repurposed textiles, including a duvet, bedding and pillow – Nightscape, Upside Down, Inside Out, mapping the impact of sustained sleep deprivation endured by those displaced, seeking home in Britain. Comfort, contrasted with jarring loss. Home, with anything but.
Hauntingly, you also see this searing sense of contrast in All But Milk, an installation that flanks almost an entire wall, in Gallery 1, Kettle’s yard, as part of Urgent Archive; marking the lost lives of Palestinian children – with fabric and ephemera contained in baby milk bottles, from shoe laces, socks and ribbon, to typewriter ribbon. Innocence, emphasising a tragic sense of violent fragmentation.
Disorientation sweeps throughout Urgent Archive, reminiscent not just of destruction, but of memory loss and displaced roots. Kettle’s Yard is clearly an artistic home of sorts to Kourbaj, whose support for the artist has been notable. But home, feels shattered. ‘Where is home?’ he asks me. ‘Is it under our feet, or in front of us?’ Home, it’s clear, is transient.
Kourbaj shares the warmth of kinship and family in these personal photos, in the handknitted jumper made by Kourbaj’s mother that his son Mourad wears (now grown up, whose work with Kourbaj you can see at Urgent Archive in video work, Shores of Power). A sense of home and genuine comfort, shines. It’s a welcome feeling. A reminder of the power of connection. Love, amidst loss.
‘My son also has jumpers made by his Grandma’, I smile, ‘that’s just beautiful.’ It is.
Words by Ruthie Collins
Issam Kourbaj: Urgent Archive is on show at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge until 26 May 2024.
Find out more and plan your visit:
www.kettlesyard.cam.ac.uk/whats-on/issam-kourbaj-urgent-archive
‘These were made by my grandmother,’ Kourbaj is pointing at grainy black and white images, ‘out of old clothes. She used to make quilts - in the mountains, we used to use them in the mountains to protect ourselves from the cold weather. But if you look at them, they look like very beautiful abstract paintings. So, without her knowing, she influenced me as a painter.’
Although Kourbaj is not an artist who works predominantly with fabric, as a media the use of textiles and related ephemera is a significant strand of his work. ‘I find material and convert it, repurpose it to speak a new language. This is a bridge between me and the past’ - and, yes, the present’. Painting, making and working with objects become a way of restoring connection to Syria. A crossover of everyday life with art, often with startling, emotive impact.
Image and image above: Issam Kourbaj: Urgent Archive at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge. Photo by Jo Underhill.
‘Hidden in this artistic lament for people who are forcibly uprooted, is a universal reflection evoked for me by the ephemeral materials he has chosen to express how fragile life is, however fixed it seems for a time.’ The Reverend Lucy Winkett commented, describing Kourbaj’s work on Radio 4, Thought for the Day, in 2015.
This fragile beauty sings throughout Kourbaj’s work. Inspiring loss, inviting hope. Stand out installation, includes a repurposed damaged tent that can no longer give shelter, spans a gallery wall in Kettle’s Yard - Our exile grows a day longer, and a day closer is our return. Dates are woven into the fabric as an everyday record of the uprising in Syria started on 15 March 2011 – contributed to by participants in Cambridge and all over the UK.
Aged from twenties, up to their seventies, from different disciplines – from weavers to textiles lovers, ‘all women’, Kourbaj says. ‘The seed has an agency’, Kourbaj explains, ‘but, equally, the tent has another agency.’ Thousands of dates are threaded with red thread, for visual contrast. ‘The idea is that a seed is an archive,’ he says. Not just art, but also a record of social history, a re-weaving of Syrian cultural heritage.
A second repurposed tent, The Map of Absence is installed in sister show, You are Not You and Home is Not Home at the Heong Gallery; punctuated with holes that let ‘dreams’ slip away, but also let the ‘light in’, Kourbaj says.
It’s this poetic range of art and the everyday that weaves both shows with an uncompromising beauty. ‘Syria is very small, but so diverse,’ Kourbaj explains. ‘I come from the South where there were lots of people weaving. My mother was one of them.’
According to the Syrian Textiles Heritage Archive, weaving in Syria is an ‘art’. Most famous in Damascus, for its silk, which Kourbaj describes as a visible part of the landscape of the city where he lived while training as an artist at the Institute of Fine Arts. ‘In Aleppo, there is silk weaving, too. When I lived in Damascus you see people weaving silk, Damaskian silk.’ So, it’s perhaps unsurprising that fabric often interweaves with his work, appearing as bold statement on the experiences caught in the Syria crisis, or impacted by conflict.
You see this in ‘Sole-less’, exhibited in Gallery 2, in Kettle’s Yard as part of Urgent Archive, transformed, as if Kourbaj’s studio. On the surface, an innocuous collection of fabric shoes whose soles have been removed – mirroring moves by police who cut the shoe soles of migrant children arriving to France. ‘A brutal psychological act – I wanted to make a statement about this,’ he tells me. This subversion of the everyday, whether working with the ‘skin’ of canvas, or the springs of mattresses – are acts of honesty that strip humanity down to the truth – however unsettling.
It's an unnerving quality, revealing fresh perspectives to crisis at a time when so many are at risk of becoming desensitised – and the truth is hard to hear. ‘I’ve taken the fabric out, it’s almost like it’s revealing its struggle. The fabric is like a skin,’ Kourbaj says of installation Fallen Springs, the metal starkly unapologetic under the gallery light.
At the Heong Gallery, is another installation made from repurposed textiles, including a duvet, bedding and pillow – Nightscape, Upside Down, Inside Out, mapping the impact of sustained sleep deprivation endured by those displaced, seeking home in Britain. Comfort, contrasted with jarring loss. Home, with anything but.
Hauntingly, you also see this searing sense of contrast in All But Milk, an installation that flanks almost an entire wall, in Gallery 1, Kettle’s yard, as part of Urgent Archive; marking the lost lives of Palestinian children – with fabric and ephemera contained in baby milk bottles, from shoe laces, socks and ribbon, to typewriter ribbon. Innocence, emphasising a tragic sense of violent fragmentation.
Disorientation sweeps throughout Urgent Archive, reminiscent not just of destruction, but of memory loss and displaced roots. Kettle’s Yard is clearly an artistic home of sorts to Kourbaj, whose support for the artist has been notable. But home, feels shattered. ‘Where is home?’ he asks me. ‘Is it under our feet, or in front of us?’ Home, it’s clear, is transient.
Kourbaj shares the warmth of kinship and family in these personal photos, in the handknitted jumper made by Kourbaj’s mother that his son Mourad wears (now grown up, whose work with Kourbaj you can see at Urgent Archive in video work, Shores of Power). A sense of home and genuine comfort, shines. It’s a welcome feeling. A reminder of the power of connection. Love, amidst loss.
‘My son also has jumpers made by his Grandma’, I smile, ‘that’s just beautiful.’ It is.
Words by Ruthie Collins
Issam Kourbaj: Urgent Archive is on show at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge until 26 May 2024.
Find out more and plan your visit:
www.kettlesyard.cam.ac.uk/whats-on/issam-kourbaj-urgent-archive