“History in the Making”, latest collection of Halim Al Karim, is being exhibited at XVA Gallery April 14th, 2022. Halim Al Karim is an Iraqi photographer and artist known for out-of-focus images that explore issues of power, violence, and memory. He has come a long way since his turbulent youth in politically unstable Iraq, yet the impact of his traumatic experiences can be traced in his works.
Halim Al Karim experiments with photography, minimally focusing enlarged negatives, creating his own blurred images. He explores ideas of detachment and disengagement; he photographes his subjects and models in front of stark backgrounds, which he would make disappear in the darkroom. The out of focus images imply an uncertainty of context, time and place. His work touches on the insecure state between reality and illusion.
“I take a great interest in how history and lost memory shapes the understanding of our being in the hidden worlds, how it’s shaped by the contradictions that our existence poses between two realities,” says Halim Al Karim. “In the process of remembering, a point is reached at which lost memory and history intersect, and it is this intersection that I’m trying to explore and present through my work and wondering if it is the appropriate passage to re-communicate with our first spiritual existence in the hidden worlds.”
Another technique employed by Halim is to cover works with tightly stretched sheer silk, creating a protective barrier between viewer and subject, conscious and subconscious humanity.
XVA Gallery is one of the leading galleries in the Middle East specialising in contemporary art from the Arab world, Iran, and the Subcontinent. Exhibitions focus on works by the region’s foremost artists as well as those emerging onto the scene.
Fo more information, please visit www.xvagallery.com
