ArtistsMiryam Haddad
Miryam Haddad, Le soleil nomade, 2021
The young Syrian Miryam Haddad now living in Paris creates paintings that have the virtue of escaping photographic reproduction. Where the digital sensor fails, the eye alone can appreciate the rare swathes of the colour, the power of the impasto, the complexity of the juxtapositions, the rubbing of the brushes and the marks left by the palette knife. These are works that are not afraid of sensuous colours rich in pigment. Indeed they seek these out and play voluptuously on the cohabitation of absinth green, vermilion and ochre, but also the juxtapositions of deep purple and Indian orange.*
The war in Syria obliged the artist to leave her country earlier than she had planned in 2012. This experience surely intensifies the drama of canvases that are built up into incandescent extasies of pigment lent jewel-bright hardness by fragments of stained glass and ceramic. Her paintings retain a defiant beauty that suggest that humanity, even at its most devastated, will find a way to rise from the depths.
In 2019, the artist was the laureate of the Jean Francois Prat prize, had a solo show at the Collection Lambert in Avignon and was selected to create the poster for the 73rd Festival d’Avignon. Her work has recently featured in the following group and solo exhibitions: FRAC Auvergne, Clermont Ferrand/FR, Le Printemps de septembre, Toulouse/FR (curator Christian Bernard) (2021); J’aime, Je n’aime pas, Eigen + Art, Leipzig (2020); Group show, Shibuya Hikarie Cube gallery, Tokyo (2020); Prix Jean-François Prat, Fondation Bredin Prat, Paris (2019); Globe as a Palette, Hokkaido Obihiro Museum of Art (touring Kushiro Art Museum, Hokkaido, Hakodate Museum of Art, Sapporo Art Museum, Hokkaido, 2019); Jeunes artistes en Europe — Les métamorphoses, Fondation Cartier, Paris (2019).
*Alain Berland, Catalogue — Prix Jean-François Prat 2019, Éditions Jannick, Paris, May 2019