Ambiguous Paintings That Bring Scenes of Migration to Mind

Jad's paintings incorporate cinematic techniques (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Jad's paintings incorporate cinematic techniques (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Ambiguous Paintings That Bring Scenes of Migration to Mind

Jad's paintings incorporate cinematic techniques (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Jad's paintings incorporate cinematic techniques (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Egyptian artist Yasser Jad presented a conceptual vision with a degree of cinematic poetry, with shadows of people covering the paintings at his new self-entitled exhibition that will be on display in the Khan el-Maghrabi Hall for Plastic Arts until February 19.

The exhibition is part of Yasser Jad’s new project, Al Mashhad Al Akheer (The Last Scene), which is inspired by Carlos Saura’s Argentine- Spanish film Tango.

Jad tells Asharq Al-Awsat he “is indebted to this genius director whose works I am still learning a lot from.”

Tango depicts the massive wave of European migration to Argentina during the late 19th and early 20th century, which saw mostly Italians and Spaniards, but also those from other nationalities, flock to the country.

Jad builds his visual world with cinematic concepts, as though he is directing his groups inside his paintings’ cadres, incorporating cinematic elements into work by using cinematographic tools. Examining their expressions through light and shadow, he colors his cotton paper with charcoal to grant his figures and protagonists remarkable expressive capacities. He believes that art is in constant need of novel solutions and experimentation: “experimental solutions leave my works surpassing my expectations sometimes.”

The artist leaves plenty of room for his audiences’ imagination as they contemplate his works’ empty chairs. They resemble historical ghosts, but their form leaves them brimming with stories, as do his paintings’ intertwined humans, which the artist chose to draw devoid of features, lurking between the shadows and the darkness. However, in their abstractness, they continue the stories of chairs. Jad says that he creates this distance intentionally so that we may imagine ourselves to be travelers, without knowing if we are departing or returning, whether we have arrived or still have a long way to go.

Despite the immigration scenes’ apparent gloom, the artist believes his work is biased in favor of hope. “The migration scenes, on the surface, appear to deeply express disappointment, which undoubtedly pushes us to leave, but it is by no means the last scene. Emigrating is the first scene, a beginning, which manifests a genuine will to be born again, and all kinds of migrations bring about a new sunrise.”

Perhaps migration and its abundant sentiments are issues that concern Yasser Jad, who considers them to be about humanity first and foremost: “All the themes of my works are concerned with a purely human dimension, even if this human element is not directly or clearly apparent.

"All of my work touches on my being, with it is the faces I see every day as I move around, the places I have lived or whose alleys I have passed through, or in the conceptions and elements that are pitstops in my life journey."



As It Attacks Iran's Nuclear Program, Israel Maintains Ambiguity about Its Own

FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)
FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)
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As It Attacks Iran's Nuclear Program, Israel Maintains Ambiguity about Its Own

FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)
FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)

Israel says it is determined to destroy Iran’s nuclear program because its archenemy's furtive efforts to build an atomic weapon are a threat to its existence.

What’s not-so-secret is that for decades Israel has been believed to be the Middle East’s only nation with nuclear weapons, even though its leaders have refused to confirm or deny their existence, The Associated Press said.

Israel's ambiguity has enabled it to bolster its deterrence against Iran and other enemies, experts say, without triggering a regional nuclear arms race or inviting preemptive attacks.

Israel is one of just five countries that aren’t party to a global nuclear nonproliferation treaty. That relieves it of international pressure to disarm, or even to allow inspectors to scrutinize its facilities.

Critics in Iran and elsewhere have accused Western countries of hypocrisy for keeping strict tabs on Iran's nuclear program — which its leaders insist is only for peaceful purposes — while effectively giving Israel's suspected arsenal a free pass.

On Sunday, the US military struck three nuclear sites in Iran, inserting itself into Israel’s effort to destroy Iran’s program.

Here's a closer look at Israel's nuclear program:

A history of nuclear ambiguity Israel opened its Negev Nuclear Research Center in the remote desert city of Dimona in 1958, under the country's first leader, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. He believed the tiny fledgling country surrounded by hostile neighbors needed nuclear deterrence as an extra measure of security. Some historians say they were meant to be used only in case of emergency, as a last resort.

After it opened, Israel kept the work at Dimona hidden for a decade, telling United States’ officials it was a textile factory, according to a 2022 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an academic journal.

Relying on plutonium produced at Dimona, Israel has had the ability to fire nuclear warheads since the early 1970s, according to that article, co-authored by Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists, and Matt Korda, a researcher at the same organization.

Israel's policy of ambiguity suffered a major setback in 1986, when Dimona’s activities were exposed by a former technician at the site, Mordechai Vanunu. He provided photographs and descriptions of the reactor to The Sunday Times of London.

Vanunu served 18 years in prison for treason, and is not allowed to meet with foreigners or leave the country.

ISRAEL POSSESSES DOZENS OF NUCLEAR WARHEADS, EXPERTS SAY

Experts estimate Israel has between 80 and 200 nuclear warheads, although they say the lower end of that range is more likely.

Israel also has stockpiled as much as 1,110 kilograms (2,425 pounds) of plutonium, potentially enough to make 277 nuclear weapons, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a global security organization. It has six submarines believed to be capable of launching nuclear cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles believed to be capable of launching a nuclear warhead up to 6,500 kilometers (4,000 miles), the organization says.

Germany has supplied all of the submarines to Israel, which are docked in the northern city of Haifa, according to the article by Kristensen and Korda.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST POSE RISKS

In the Middle East, where conflicts abound, governments are often unstable, and regional alliances are often shifting, nuclear proliferation is particularly dangerous, said Or Rabinowitz, a scholar at Jerusalem's Hebrew University and a visiting associate professor at Stanford University.

“When nuclear armed states are at war, the world always takes notice because we don’t like it when nuclear arsenals ... are available for decision makers,” she said.

Rabinowitz says Israel's military leaders could consider deploying a nuclear weapon if they found themselves facing an extreme threat, such as a weapon of mass destruction being used against them.

Three countries other than Israel have refused to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons: India, Pakistan and South Sudan. North Korea has withdrawn. Iran has signed the treaty, but it was censured last week, shortly before Israel launched its operation, by the UN's nuclear watchdog — a day before Israel attacked — for violating its obligations.

Israel's policy of ambiguity has helped it evade greater scrutiny, said Susie Snyder at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a group that works to promote adherence to the UN treaty.

Its policy has also shined a light on the failure of Western countries to rein in nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, she said.

They “prefer not to be reminded of their own complicity,” she said.