Rawaa Talass
DUBAI: Veteran Kuwaiti artist Thuraya Al-Baqsami discussed with Arab News her 1990 linocut – “No to the Invasion” – inspired by Iraq’s invasion of her country.
This is my favorite painting of mine. It is my icon. I made it during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. I was in Kuwait in 1990 and it was the only summer that I didn’t travel. Everything started on August 2. I was with my husband and three young daughters. I moved to a safer area in Kuwait, but my mother and sisters decided to leave. They asked me to come with them and I said, “No. I’m not going anywhere.”
On August 5, my husband’s friends were sitting in my studio, preparing a plan for an underground bulletin called “People’s Resistance.” I had my small press and made a blue-and-white linocut, showing two angry faces — a man and a woman — and wrote “No to the Invasion” in Arabic. It is very direct, showing the anger of the people, and I was one of them.
My plan was to print this artwork, make photocopies of it, and put them all over Kuwait — like a poster to show Iraqi soldiers that they were not welcome. But I couldn’t do that because it was very dangerous. I gave some to our friends, but sadly some were caught and executed. I was very scared and thought that maybe they’d look for me. I decided to hide the linocut block in the air conditioning unit on the roof.
It didn’t take me long to finish; I had everything ready in my head. My problem was the Arabic calligraphy, which I’m not good at. But I tried my best. In this artwork, I present a Kuwaiti man and woman in their national clothes to represent ‘the People’. There’s no way to just have a man alone; most of those in the underground resistance were women.
After the liberation, I managed to print this work. I’m very happy that it’s been shown in New York, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Eritrea, London and Edinburgh. This work is suitable for any time, for any nation suddenly invaded by another country to get more land. It’s happened again and again, like Palestine and Ukraine. I think this artwork will never get old or die, because there’s always suffering happening somewhere in this world.
Courtesy: arabnews
