Articles
August 2011, Pages 34-36
Special Report
Painter Helen Zughaib: A Foot in Two Countries and Two Cultures
By Barbara Ferguson
During Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's visit to the White House last year, President Barack Obama presented the leader with a gift: a painting by Arab-American artist Helen Zughaib.
The piece, "Midnight Prayers," notable for its symbolism and rich use of colors, depicts a scene of Arab life in a hopeful, healing and spiritual way, said Zughaib. In an interview in her Washington, DC studio, she described the painting as "my imagination of the call to prayer. The beauty of the call to prayer, combined with the rich detail of intricate Islamic designs in blues and greens, symbolize the beauty and lushness of the Arab world. The colors—blues and greens—were chosen to further express that idea of tranquility and peace. And at the essence of that painting is my hope for a peaceful Middle East.
"I envision the call to prayers as unifying everyone," she added. "Even though there is a lot going on in that painting, the impression that you get is of calmness and stillness."
President Obama's gift to Prime Minister Maliki was not the first time Zughaib's work had been exchanged between political leaders, but it was the most noteworthy. On her recent trip to Morocco, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Zughaib's interpretation of the Washington monument to King Mohamed V. The piece had been purchased by the State Department's Office of Protocol, which obtains gifts for the president, first lady, vice president and secretary of state to present to foreign heads of state.
Zughaib's paintings also have been widely exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States, Europe and Lebanon. They are included in many private and public collections as well, including the White House, World Bank, Library of Congress, U.S. Consulate General in Vancouver, Canada, the American Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, and the Arab American National Museum in Detroit, Michigan.
In contrast to the flamboyant hues of her paintings, Zughaib was dressed in a simple white blouse and a pair of jeans for our interview. Also present were her two cats, Stubby and Clumpy.
"He's very smart," Zughaib said of Stubby, an abandoned cat who lost his tail before Zughaib rescued and adopted him. She made this observation as the feline gingerly walked along the edge of the new paintings she was preparing for an upcoming exhibit at the Jerusalem Fund, a DC-based organization that supports Palestinians.
Zughaib's distinctive artistic style is achieved through the medium of gouache, "an opaque water color" also used in the illustrations of the Qur'an, and in Persian and Indian miniatures, which, she said, influenced her.
Also in her studio were 20 six-inch-square wooden blocks painted with different vibrant patterns. Zughaib said they represent the richly patterned embroidered garments of Palestinian women that varies from Palestinian town to town—many of which are now blocked by Israel's 40-foot-high "security" wall.
Despite her work's subject matter, Zughaib said she does not consider herself political. "My aim as an artist, especially after 9/11, is to further the dialogue between East and West," she told theWashington Report. "We must continue to try to bring people together in conversation with the hope of mutual understanding, acceptance and respect."
One of her paintings, "Secrets Under the Abaya" (2005), was created, she said, in response to the increasingly negative perceptions of Islam and Muslim culture. In it, a silhouetted white figure is isolated in a black background, causing the viewer's gaze to fixate on the repetition of an Iraqi proverb, written in Arabic, which reads, "There are many secrets hidden under the abaya."
From Lebanon to America
Born in Beirut to a Lebanese father and American mother, Zughaib lived mostly in the Middle East and Europe before coming to the United States to study art. In 1981 she received her bachelor of fine arts from Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts.
Her best-known series of paintings is "Stories my Father Told Me," based on his recollections of his childhood in the Levant. The paintings reflect her family's profound cultural ties to the Middle East, recreated through memories and sensations of her birthplace, that resulted in vivid compositions of delicate figures and detailed narratives.
"I started to paint my father's story after the 9/11 attacks, when things changed so much here," Zughaib recalled.
When approached by a gallery to do a solo exhibition around 2005, she said she needed a theme for the proposed exhibit. "I had recently gone to the Philips collection and seen Jacob Lawrence's Negro migration series. He did a series of paintings during the WPA program [a U.S. government employment program for artists in the 1930s], and he used the same medium as me, gouache."
She learned that she had been chosen for the exhibition while dining with her parents. "My dad was in the midst of telling a story, as he often does, about family, relatives, and his experiences back in Syria as a child," she said.
"He was halfway through a story about my grandmother crossing the Litani River when the Turks were occupying Lebanon and my family was escaping. As my father was speaking, my mother suddenly says: 'We have to record your father some time.' Then I received this phone call and all of a sudden everything coalesced, and the gallery owner loved the idea of me painting my father's childhood remembrances."
Zughaib admitted that her father needed strong persuasion before agreeing to the idea. "When I asked my father if I could paint his story, he was emphatic: 'No!'"
So she turned to her mother, who is American of Scotch-Irish descent, explained the problem, and—as daughters have done for centuries when a father says no—asked her mother to speak to him for her.
"Fortunately my mother was able to persuade him," said Zughaib. "And he begrudgingly agreed to write his childhood stories for me, even though he said he considered them to be strictly family and very private."
The result is a hakawati, or series of stories: "Arabs have a tradition of story-telling," Zughaib explained. "They revolve around their families. They are traditions and parables that teach you a moral lesson."
With some nudging, Zughaib's father wrote 14 stories for her, and she translated each one into a visual account of his childhood.
The result was a huge success. "People went crazy about them, not just Arab Americans, but anyone who had experienced the immigrant tradition could identify with them," Zughaib said. "These paintings helped me portray Arabs by showing their humanity. I didn't do it for that reason, but that's how it turned out."
But her father remained stoic about her success, Zughaib said. When he came to view the exhibition she had painted from his stories, he observed them all, but, "He didn't say anything."
Once again, Zughaib turned to her mother for counsel. Then, "the next day he came to my studio, entered, but didn't mention anything about my paintings. He just handed me a manuscript and said: 'Here's another story for you.' Then he turned around and walked out the door.
"He's now given me a total of 22 stories," Zughaib said, beaming. "His writing is very charming. He is British-educated, so his writing is very proper.
"My father is Syrian/Lebanese," Zughaib continued. He was "born in Damascus, and lived there until the French divided the country."
Her family was evacuated from Lebanon in December of 1975. "I left my father there, and my dad promised that we'd be back home in one week."
But, as with so many refugees in that region, that did not happen. It was her recent solo art exhibit at Beirut's Agial Gallery that finally brought them back home.
"It was the first time I returned to Lebanon since I left 35 years ago," said Zughaib. "I brought my father's stories back with me, and I think after all the years of strife that they've had there, people would come into the gallery and remember their own experiences from their own villages…and were so happy that the traditions of their childhoods hadn't been forgotten."
The paintings seamlessly blend emotions that remain close to the heart: identity and nostalgia, with humor and love entwined in the rituals of village life. The success of her exhibition was immediate: "We pretty much sold the show out."
"Stories My Father Told Me" is posted on her Web site, <www.hzughaib.com>.
The aim of her artwork is simple, Zughaib explained: "I hope my work inspires open and continued dialogue between the Arab world and the West. I truly believe that both sides share a common bond—and that one really can have a discussion over a painting that may end stereotypes. I really want to achieve mutual understanding and have that dialogue; because I have a foot in both countries, and in both cultures."
Barbara Ferguson is a Washington, DC-based correspondent for the Arab News.
