I, Komeil
Not here
July 2024, Georgetown, Penang
This essay was written by Gareth Richards for a mini exhibition of Komeil’s work at Hikayat Penang.
Radical instability is the steady thrum of so much contemporary experience. The world turns and turns in its own massive and self-generated abjection. ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’, as Yeats once wrote. The refugee and the exile stand as a reproach to the multiple failures of a hollowed-out humanity.
Exile signifies not just the consequence of political banishment and economic desperation. It also refers to the violence of displacement, of dislocation and of the subsequent diaspora of people’s values, norms and cultural identity. Neither in nor out. Betwixt and between. Yet, at the same time, of course, actually bearing the name of a previous identification. And now? Existing in a carefully defined nowhere place within the boundaries of some other nation or state, so clearly also undeniably present, so clearly made invisible.
Komeil Zarin is one of millions of Iranians who search for a home in another place. Among those millions, many have been bearers of culture – novelists and poets, filmmakers and actors, painters and photographers, musicians and dancers – carrying memories of trauma, narratives of flight and the need to make a new home. It’s a constant narrative with a long history. The great Hāfez, the memoriser, wrote this couplet seven hundred years ago:
ما بدین در نه پی حشمت و جاه آمدهایم از بد حادثه اینجا به پناه آمدهایم
We have not come at this door for pomp and position
Because of misfortune, we have sought refuge here
The lines are timeless and emotional; they resonate with both calamity and hope. Where, then, is the ‘here’ of an artist like Komeil whose life has been so scarred by rupture? His paintings necessarily generate an idea of home that is never complete. Because the home recalled is not the home that was, and because the present home is deeply compromised by the unsettling of time and space. It is the reason Komeil says, ‘I think I have always been looking for refuge. Art has given me that. It has always shown me the way to escape from the world.’
Man crossing the border
A cloud
Origin of the world
He creates a visual world instead, one that asserts its own sense of his personal unsettled state of being. The three monochrome paintings – Man crossing the border, A cloud and Origin of the world – explore the possibilities a minimalist form of lyrical abstraction, paring down objects and figures into distinct areas and planes, capturing a liminal space, a pause. The imagery is taken from the real world and altered in conceptual ways to express moments of transformation.
The portraits bring back a vivid, expressionist palette. Each is an arresting representation of the inner character of the subject. The brushstrokes are disruptive, and there is a fierceness to the paint itself as it is pulled, scraped and incised, seeking something below the surface. Are these ‘wounded faces’ whose eyes are unseeing? While Louise is a person known to Komeil, Head of a Woman and Portrait of a Poet are almost archetypes, blind seers who can see more than we can.
And then the masterwork that is the self-portrait I, Komeil, (next page)monumental in conception and realisation. Painted on a tropical beach under a searing sun, and yet once again the palette is subdued, the black figure of the artist silhouetted against an indeterminate background. But the body is blemished. The surface of the canvas has been scratched so that the white of the canvas is revealed. The black colour of the figure – the hands, the torso, the face – has been marked, injured, while the legs are erased. The intention is not to reveal or disclose, but to shroud the artist, the unsettled who has never regained a home except in his art.
Louise
Head of a woman
Portrait of a poet
Komeil says, ‘When I paint an object, I like to deconstruct it – destroy it! To the point where it can no longer be recognisable by an unclean eye. I say, let there be a flame in place of that tree, in place of that cloud, in place of the faces that I should paint.’ His own self-portrait exists in a near-void, alone save for his thoughts and his imaginings, perhaps believing that another world is possible and if we remain quiet for long enough we can hear her arriving.Komeil remarks, ‘It has been lonely here.’ He lives his life through art in perpetual motion, always between before, now and then. ‘If I wish to paint a tree these days I should close the curtains and shut the door. Lest an uninvited visitor should knock on the door. “I’m not home! Not yet! I’m only on my way there!”, I say. The unwanted visitor turns into a tree.’
These are radical approaches to painting, constantly thwarting the representation of the figure or object as a fixed, self-contained whole. Instead the work embraces vulnerable, fragmented forms – a radical instability for our times. In that way, Komeil finds a different kind of refuge here, only one not of this world.
Artist's
story
I must be about three years old when I first discover a paintbrush. Its wooden handle looks like a long finger. Its bristles like dad’s stubble. Dad paints.
I draw. Obsessively. With my finger on the sky when there’s no paper and pen. I take the sky with me everywhere I go. And I find the starry night sky fascinating. When I am seven, I am good at drawing. Uncles show me off to their guests. They enjoy watching me draw and seeing the guests impressed. Everyone is amazed. I do not think what I can do is very significant. I wish to be a prophet one day instead and perform signs. I wish to be able to change a rose, for instance, into something else.
When I am seventeen I begin experiencing repetitive nightmares. I am on the run. From those who want to stab me with knives. Shoot me with guns. I run for my life. These dreams are to last for twenty years. Breathless.
I was born in Iran. In 1983. My dad was a painter. I later learned that he was also a musician. But he had to stop playing music. He had to erase his past and live in disguise. A cultural revolution had taken place just before I was born, and music had been banned. I fall in love with the music that leaks from the TV dramas. I fall in love with soundtracks. I often talk with my dad. He is my best company. With him, above all, I feel safe.
When I am twenty-eight dad takes me to the airport. This is my only chance to leave. He is anxious. I must not miss this flight. An hour later I am seated in the plane. I tell myself, if I am forced to return here I will make sure I am dead.
Today I am forty-two. I draw. I paint. I thanked my dad on the phone sometime before he died. I thanked him for painting. He said, ‘It was you. You wouldn’t let me paint unless I prepared a small canvas for you too’.
I have been here for fifteen years. I have made friends – where even death cannot part us. And I don’t want to ever go back. And I don’t want to ever go anywhere. Yet when I am forty-one everything I’ve got is packed inside an invisible suitcase. I wish I could just stay. These are tired times. And everybody’s got to have a home. I hear them say, ‘Not here’.