“Art has a deep human mission, which is to open the windows of beauty and its gates to its audience to enjoy and realize the value of fleeting moments in one’s life, the value of happiness, the meaning of love and human bonding.”
—Afifa Aleiby
The lush background of Afifa Aleiby’s 2021 work, My Earthly Paradise, is an idyllic landscape with Mediterranean cypress trees, white buildings capped with terracotta roofs and rolling green hills conjuring thoughts of the southern European countryside. Like most of Aleiby’s works, the subject is a female figure centrally positioned within the composition. The figure reclines in a wooden chair on a balcony overlooking the vista. While immersed in the blissful natural beauty, the figure gazes towards the distance wearing a stoic expression – a recurring motif within Aleiby’s work that Olga Nefedova refers to as a “sombre sadness.”i The resulting juxtaposition between subject and background creates an emotionally complex work that reflects the artist’s personal journey.
Born in Basra, Iraq in 1953, Aleiby was raised in an artistic family and encouraged to embrace creativity in all forms from a young age.ii She began her artistic studies at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in the early 1970s. In 1974 she left Iraq, enrolling in the Surikov Institute in Moscow. After graduating in 1981 with a master’s degree in Mural Art, Aleiby was unable to return to Iraq due to political conflict. She moved to Italy and then Yemen, eventually landing in the Netherlands in 1993, where she continues to live today.
The artist’s life story, defined by exile and constant migration, is reflected in the intricacies of her visual language and the subjects she depicts. A childhood interest in the art of Russian painters such as Mikhail Vrubel and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin was brought to new heights when Aleiby arrived in Moscow. After immersing herself in the art scene, she began to adopt facets of Russian art into her own artistic style. In particular, Aleiby was inspired by the emphasis on natural beauty and connection to the land that Socialist Realists used to convey utopic settings while remaining rooted in the real world.iii Similarly, the sculptural compositions of her figures have drawn comparisons to the robust depictions of workers in Socialist Realist murals. Aleiby’s work also draws from the ephemeral nature of Renaissance paintings, the aesthetic echoes of which can be seen in the compositions, tones and fashion employed throughout the artist’s oeuvre.
In combining a Socialist Realist sense of strength with the paradisal atmosphere of Renaissance art, Aleiby forges a unique, personalized visual language that transcends both time and geographic borders. Nefedova connects the solemn gazes of Aleiby’s subjects to the artist’s fractured relationship with her homeland. Only returning to Iraq once briefly in 2004 since leaving, Aleiby has had to witness the political and social changes in the country from a distance. Mysa Kafil-Hussain notes that this exacerbated the disconnect between Aleiby and her home country, stating that within Aleiby’s work, “there is a persistent distance, and an ongoing longing for connection and community.”iv The present lot serves as a prominent example of the emotional depth Aleiby conveys in her art.