The Unfakable
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| Khalid Albaih at the graffiti wall of the exhibition, the cartoons dirtied up as they would be outside. With Jens Nüchel Petersen, July 5, 2018. Photo: Niels Larsen. |
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| "We Were Perfect", view from the exhibition at the Library at Kulturværftet in Elsinore. Photo: LCL. |
A young refugee from the Syrian regime, his wide-eyed reaction, when being told that the artist was present before him was the best moment of the evening. His eyes told the story of the presence of Khalid's work too since 2011.
Running through one room of the exhibition is a "graffiti wall" a giant paper wall with dirtied up prints as they would have been seen stenciled on walls in Tahrir Square, Cairo and in Beirut. They were likewise brought on to the streets when demonstrating against regimes, or against the handling of refugees in Australia, and first and foremost they have gone viral on smart-screens in the Arab world as in the West.
The original of the cartoon is at any given instance the publicized one. In this case its publication took place in all of its formats, size and materials. We may speak of a first apparition on the screens, but the constitutive properties are not ephemeral, nor are they transitory. On the contrary, in each of their configurations, his works are fully there as he intended.
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| "We Were Perfect", view from the exhibition at the Library at Kulturværftet in Elsinore. Photo: LCL. |
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| "We Were Perfect", view from the exhibition at the Library at Kulturværftet in Elsinore. Photo: LCL. |
The artworks of Khalid are as clear-cut in form as they are in meaning. A luminous background onto which is a clear-cut graphic element. Simple, yet detailed. They address the specific in laying out a situation, while insisting on the intellectual curiosity of their beholders to think for themselves in everything they hear and do.
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| "We Were Perfect", view from the exhibition at the Library at Kulturværftet in Elsinore. Photo: LCL. |
Khalid's objective was understood given it was taken to the streets in the call for change from the noise of despots doing their damnedest to undermine every instance of calm to think.
"Fake" has been a despotic buzzword these years in their adoption of what Orwell termed doublethink, to reach the point were nothing is - well, where nothingness reigns. Contrary to this we have the unfakable of the realm of art, as termed by the philosopher of aesthetics, Nelson Goodman.
Goodman would not have approved of the authoritative manifold of the unique, but then he wrote before there was such a thing as an image being printed on equally excellent appliances across the globe.
Our first visitor came back moments later with his best friend, who originates from Ethiopia. Two friends from two continents accentuating a body of work, which in turn is the embodiment of the poet Maya Angelou:
I go forth alone, and stand as ten thousand.
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| The local graffiti wall by the library at Kulturværftet, so of course there is an invitation to find inspiration inside. Photo: LCL. |
The Exhibition We Were Perfect at the Library of Kulturværftet, Elsinore/Helsingør. It opened last Thursday and runs until September 27, 2018.
