The face of a fish

The Face of a Fish — Alaa Albaldawi

Everything is in motion and nothing is still. A blazing yellow sky, urgent, almost alarm-like, pushes down on a composition that is pure kinetic energy: figures raising staffs and fists, a bull charging through the centre, horses pressing forward with woven texture embedded into their bodies like armour or memory, faces multiplying in every direction. A fish appears at the upper left, watching the chaos with the ancient, patient eye of a creature that has outlived every civilisation that ever rose beside a river. And there are many rivers here , this is Mesopotamia, the land between two waters, where the fish has always been a symbol of abundance, of life, of what survives. The nets pressed into the paint are real, actual texture collaged into the surface, as if the canvas itself is being pulled from the water, dripping and alive. This is not a peaceful painting. It is a painting about the relentless continuation of life through upheaval, and the bull that keeps charging, the fist that keeps rising, the fish that keeps watching, long after the noise has passed.