Fugitive traces : Nomadic artist inspired by Berber culture.
By Charlene Rodrigues / Middle East Eye - April 2019
In his new exhibition in London, Firouz Farman Farmaian interweaves the sacred symbols of Amazigh craftsmen from North Africa with his own Persian heritage.
We are sat in @Space50, a cavernous Victorian house turned studio in Mayfair where Iranian diaspora artist Firouz Farman Farmaian’s exhibition "Permanence of Trace" is on display. Bold, geometric patterns and Berber iconography dominate his art panels lining the walls.
It isn’t hard to identify Farmaian by his theatrical style. He is dressed in a graphic patterned shirt with matching harem-styled trousers and jewellery - a style of Berber heritage that anchors our conversation. "She is the spirit and the figment for the continuity of trace," he says of a central portrait of a 1900s Berber woman weaver, inspired by his visit to the Berber Museum at Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech.
"Permanence of Trace" is typical of his approach, in that it interweaves the sacred symbols of Amazigh craftsmen from North Africa with his own Persian heritage. Berber tent fabrics and canvasses depict the ephemera of women weavers of North Africa alongside fibulas, rafters and crosses. Amazighs, also called Berbers, are an ancient North African ethnic group and the name literally means "the free people". Inspired by their fortitude, creativity, rituals and traditions, Farmaian is not only questioning identity and heritage, but is keen to recover their ancient past.
One particularly relevant lesson from the Berbers is the unspoken central position of women in their way of life. “The Berbers are a women-led tribe who represent the sacred, the force. They are the creators,” he says, before adding: “Art is a sacred form of ceremony that is linked to God. Since 2000 years the same expression of art passed from one woman to the other throughout the times and this has come to us in the form of tattoos and rugs.” Equally important is this association of ceremonies, rituals and imagination with earthly objects and nature, a relationship that can be read as a timely ecological message for a modern consumerist audience.
The Portrait of a Berber Woman (oil pastel, acrylic marker on archival canvas print), though inconspicuous in size, is nonetheless sharp and imposing with distinctive crosses. “The crosses render a cosmogenic sense. There is cosmogony in Berber culture that comes from ancient Egypt and Greek culture,’ he explains. The triangle embodies fortune, fertility, abundance and protection.
