Moosa Silwadi | Knot Construction 6-19 December 2009 Memory of the Place – Bin Matar House Moosa Silwadi’s knot constructions KNOT CONSTRUCTION EXHIBITION How did you start to draw? My serious interest in drawing started early…….I was six years old. I used to scribble on all my books and my father used to shout at me in an effort to get me to keep my books clean. Drawing helps me to clear my mind, relax and visualize and it is a kind of meditation for me. The flow of my drawings are based on musical rhythm, the movement of the hand and arm is a natural, relaxed curve. I equate this to playing the guitar. My favourite music is flamenco and if I have to describe my work in musical terms I would call it a Flamenco. The Flamenco has two famous rhythms called buleria and soliar and are based on a 12 beat rhythm divided into 6 that is in turn divided into 2 and the other 6 is divided into 3 so the beat is a 123 123, 12, 12, 12 … or 123 123, 12 12 12 . The difference is that the emphasis is on the first beat the 1 or the end beat 3 and 2 . These 2 rhythms affect me deeply when I draw and they allow me to work continuously for long periods of time despite (at times) exhaustion. The beauty of rhythm is that it has a fundamental beat and together with its repetitious nature is an irresistible form of endless curves and discoveries….and emotions. My drawings try to put all of this on paper. Moosa Silwadi’s artistic creations strike the viewer with their energy and explosive dynamism. At times they remind of the whirr of objects moving at high speed, knotted buildings or futuristic cityscapes, at times they could be close-ups of the human anatomy, muscles or other organic forms. Executed in a rhythmic and fluid style, Moosa Silwadi’s works are creations of compulsion and obsession. A Bahraini architect and artist, Moosa Silwadi was born in 1968 in Bahrain to an exiled professional family from West Bank – Jerusalem. After completing his schooling in Bahrain, Moosa studied architecture in Jordan. Through the course of his career, he has worked as an interior designer, exhibition designer and architect, all of which enriched his practical experience and artistic perception. Since 2004, Moosa Silwadi has been exploring his ideas in a purely artistic manner in order to escape the constraints on creativity imposed in his everyday and professional life. Inspired by a billboard advertisement featuring a rope made into a knot, the artist continued to use this image as a metaphor for the human condition, interpersonal interactions and extended it to the field of architecture. The resulting concept “knot construction” has preoccupied Moosa Silwadi’s thinking ever since. First explored in the creation of designs for buildings, sketches and drawings of knots in all their possible forms soon followed. Silwadi’s first exhibition, titled “Infinite Lines,” was held in 2008 at the Maison Jamsheer. Consisting of sketches of traditional and futuristic builidings on Starbuck tissue paper, it also gave the public a first glimpse of Moosa Silwadi’s knot constructions in the form of computer generated architectural drawings of knot-shaped architectural forms. In the current exhibition at the Bin Matar House, the artist has taken his artistic work a step further by exploring the concept more fully and taking it into a more abstract and purely aesthetic and artistic sphere. Ranging from intimately-sized to larger scale works, from works on paper to models in aluminum sheet, metal mesh and plastic pipes, in the exhibition “Knot Construction” Moosa Silwadi freely explores the possibilities inherent in the knot. The artist divides his creations into generative, biomorphic, organic and energetic forms. Moosa Silwadi explains these different forms as follows: “My generative art is created by hand but automatically driven by my feelings, visualization and natural morphosis with the outcome being an overlapping of perspectives. I try not to interfere with the drawing however, this can be a battle at times and this in itself is the challenge. It is akin to an endless game between me, the lines and the resulting outcome. From my generative art I developed my lines to more organic forms so that the result can be seen in an abstract way as leaves and stems, or the movement of stroking fingers on a guitar. These forms have a certain strength and rhythm. Stems took me again to knots and then ropes…..it is all related. The pipe models are part of this thought process. These convoluted forms then took me to the exploration of the human body being the biomorphic part of the exhibition. I have found endless fascination in the possibilities of the twisted form and this image was further developed after I considered the plight of the Abu Ghareeb prisoners. Since then I started to see human bodies as complex knots and both my aluminum models and drawings are a reflection of that relationship. My visualization of the human body is like a convoluted complex knotted form fighting against itself in a perpetual storm. This was further inspired by a favourite poem by Mahmood Darwish when he speaks of people under occupation having turbulent rivers and storms under their skin. Finally the energetic…this collection is an enlargement of my smaller drawings. These large pieces are the exploration of the eye as a tool…a zoom lens captivating the small, intricate parts of a drawing. This process is again based on rhythm which eases the artistic process for me as I have found the production of these pieces mentally and physically draining. Once I have found the rhythm at the beginning of each piece I am able to complete the work in an almost meditative state.” The current exhibition will showcase over 60 of the artist’s drawings, together with aluminum and plastic pipe models, wire mesh sculptures and paper origami constructions. Together, they explore the artist’s world of world of imagination at a crossroads with the world of architecture. Melissa Enders-Bhatia December 2009 Shaikh Ebrahim bin Mohammed Al Khalifa Center for Culture and Research
The SUSTAINABLE / ENERGY architecture is the final section of the knotconstruction exhibition in BIN MATAR house( 9-16 decb.2009) , this section is inside the traditional room attached to the main exhibition hall, in this traditional room i shows how i used the knot art -displayed in the main hall- in architectural design and interior design … and how i used it in producing energy and construction methods for green building, houses and urban planning.