Mohammed Kacimi was a painter, poet, educator, intellectual, and political activist. Kacimi’s Nomadic Signs – Abstract Composition (1979) is a play between geometric abstraction and corporeal representation. The strong use of curvilinear lines and flat fields of unmodulated colours are evocative of signs, patterns, and symbols. Meanwhile, the geometric shapes appear to be rendering the form of human arms, one coming from the bottom right corner and the other from the top left corner; the arms may be coming into contact at the central circular area, as if they are shaking hands, but this is obscured and left ambiguous. This painting also plays with notions of positive and negative space as well as figure-ground relationships, where the background eggshell colour breaks up the shapes that make up the arms. The title refers to Kacimi’s nomadic experiences while travelling, as well as his interest in signs as systems of communication. This particular period resonates closely with the work of Jewad Selim that Kacimi saw in exhibitions of Iraqi modernism in Baghdad, Beirut, and London.
This is the first time the work of Mohammed Kacimi is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Riad Kherdeen
