This monograph on one of the Arab world’s most meticulous, focused, talented and productive artists is long overdue and most welcome. An artist who has inspired many followers, although few, if any, can emulate his unique, complex and intricate work.
I first met Nja Mahdaoui in 1988 in Baghdad, at a wonderful gathering of artists that included the late painter-sculptors Shaker Hassan Al Said and Ismail Fattah, during a biennale that took place right after the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) and before the devastating Gulf Wars which put an end to many biennales to come. Then we met again in 1992 in Tunis, during the then-famous Carthage Film Festival. In the 1980s Tunis was an Arab cultural hub, bustling with film, music and theatre festivals, and I was delighted to discover how interactive, generous and accessible Mahdaoui was. Internet facilities did not exist then of course, therefore the best way to collaborate with artists was by finding and discovering them in their workspace. In Mahdaoui’s case, his “studio” was his entire house: “I am all this”, he would say; “My books are behind me, the works are all around. My studio is my home”.
Mahdaoui belonged to a circle of artists that included dancers, musicians, writers, and theatre people. He seemed to me always hyperactive, curious, knowing many of those participating in the art scene, discovering others, collaborating with some and recommending emerging talents. “La vie c’est être dans l’action”, he often says – “Life is about being in action”.
Though I had seen his work in the early 1980s in France, our collaboration only started after our encounters in the early 1990s. Because his work reflected his love of music, dance, movement and the morphology of letters, when I called him the “Choreographer of Letters” for his solo show at the Leighton House Museum in 1994 and later in the group show Signs, Traces and Calligraphy at the Barbican Art Centre in 1995, the label stuck to him.
Of his artistic influences, he mentions his mother, who died when he was young and who used to embroider calligraphical works; his father, who encouraged him to travel; the independence of Tunisia from France in 1956; the many literary schools of thought – from French and German philosophers to Sufi mystics; and the Dante Alighieri Italian Cultural Centre, which hosted his first solo exhibition in the early 1960s, taking him to Palermo and Rome, where he graduated from the Accademia di Sant’Andrea in 1967.
A crucial encounter changed the course of his artistic life, when in 1968 he first met the French art critic, curator and collector Michel Tapié. The nephew of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Tapié was the foremost art critic of his time and the author of several essays and books on art. He introduced Mahdaoui to many artists and galleries in Italy and to a new vibrant and lively art scene that opened a new door in Mahdaoui’s quest. This is how he was introduced in 1969 to the work of some of the most innovative Japanese and Iranian artists – Zenderoudi, Pilaram, Ehsai, Tabrizi, Mafi – with whom Mahdaoui would later exhibit at the Galleria Cortina in Milan and the Galerie Cyrus in Paris.
Then, when Mahdaoui moved to Paris (1967–77) for a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts and to enroll at the École du Louvre (in the Department of Oriental Antiquities), he renewed his encounter with Tapié, who took him under his wing and this time introduced him to the Paris art scene. It was also during those ten years in Paris that he met his wonderful wife, Chantal.
During his Paris years Mahdaoui first attempted to reconceive the letter, or the morphology of the letter, with different brushstrokes. Although some have mistakenly suggested that he was trying to destroy the letter, he was actually trying to deconstruct it. He was also practicing, drafting, trying to deconstruct trends and concepts: “I wanted to avoid sliding into any of the major schools of painting”, for at that time, the Letterism movement established by Isidore Isou in the 1940s was still going strong.
By the time he came back to Tunis in 1977, the school of art known as the École de Tunis was in decline. Predominant from the 1940s to the 1970s, this style offered a window onto Tunisian life through its figurative “national” work in bright colours.
Mahdaoui was never attracted to the traditional approach to calligraphy or painting. He never liked the ready-made ideas, discipline, methods or assigned tools of creation. Because he had no formal training in calligraphy, he insists on saying, “I am not a calligrapher”. He preferred unconventional tools: a cartographer’s, topographer’s or scientist’s tools; a feather or his own found objects for drawing and shaping. He likes to discover new tools all the time and always looking for new ways to execute and advance his work. “Using traditional tools freezes me and stops me from working. I need my own input, my own stamp, my own self-adapted tools to find my signature”.
His perseverance and hard work has paid off: his signature remains original, strong, and recognizable from far and beyond. This is why among the contributors to this publication there are such notable, long-term supporters of his work: Dr Venetia Porter, curator of the Islamic Collections in the Department of Asia at the British Museum, was the first person to acquire Mahdaoui’s work for a public institution (in 1991), which led to acquisitions by the Museum of Mankind (now the Department of Ethnography at the British Museum) and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC; Martina Corgnati, Italian art historian, curator, and critic specializing in contemporary art of the Mediterranean region and twentieth-century avant-garde art; Charbel Dagher, professor at the University of Balamand, Lebanon, an active and prominent voice on the Arab cultural scene, mainly in the fields of poetry, Arabic language, and Arab and Islamic arts; Normand Biron, art critic and writer, president of AICA (Association of International Art Critics) in Canada; and Myrna Ayad, editor of Canvas, one of the most successful publications on contemporary art and culture in the Arab world.