Life is growing in cruelty. With conflicts arising in every spot of the world, human beings seek a safety shelter; a heart-soothing sentimentality, or a blossoming flower setting as a directing compass in a barren land.
As per se, Souad Mardam Bey is fluent in crafting titles for her solo exhibitions enclosing profound denotations. Denoted as ‘forbidden land’ in different narratives, the isolated land of Rose of No Man’s Land is a territory existing between two conflicting forces that left it uncharted and reign-free. The ‘rose of forbidden land’ was first coined with The Great War as it was used to describe the nurses of The Red Cross who had to line the first rows of marching forces, risking their lives in order to march to the wounded of the battles.
Honoring their role in The Great War, an English & a French versions of “The Rose of The Forbidden Land” song were dedicated to these nurses who faced death to resuscitate the lives of wounded soldiers. One of the song’s verses elaborates that despite how the land’s roses were watered with tears, they would remain sheltered in the gardens of the mind for long; they’re a work of God. Such roses were the only sort known by the war’s soldiers – A nurse would stand tall amidst the fortunes of the war to become the symbol of Rose of No Man’s Land.
The title proposes a case of contradiction. The opposition between the tenderness & the agreeable odour of the rose, and the death & war denotations rendered by the forbidden land has ignited the imagination of Souad Mardam Bey. In her works, Mardam Bey can accurately visualize either discrepancies while drawing: war and destruction inflicted on the barren land & the symbolic rose in all its gentle beauty. Roses are the symbol of Venus, love and beauty. Wars have long been existent, so is love; born at the dawn of life and eternal.
Mardam Bey’s paintings are an exquisite hybrid of sentimentality and beauty. In one of the exhibited paintings, a raven stands on the dividing fence with a rose held in its beak with an aeroplane flying over its head to the far boundary of the painting. Is the raven standing to bid its farewells to the plane or is it inferring how humans have rendered such destruction while animals perpetuate love?
The rose is the chief orbit of focus in all of the exhibition’s series of paintings. It inhabits the biggest painting in the series where it grows over the land’s surface symbolizing the continuity of life, how it defeats repulsiveness and paves the road for healing.
With the current state of the world, our spirits long for peace and tranquility. In their depths of despair, artists seek shelter in producing art. All periods of conflict and war are closely related with arts & literature. Rose of No Man’s Land is a visual response to the gloom inflicted by the world where the cycle of conflict never ends, flooding the earths with innocent blood.
Love is the only means of escape. There’s a ray of hope filling Souad Mardam Bey’s spirit that one day the flower would cross over the fence and then peace would prevail. As flowers blossom in Rose of No Man’s Land, Mardam Bey offers each and every one of them as a gift to the severely wounded whose deafening cries have echoed across the world.
About the Artist
Born in Damascus, Souad Mardam Bey spent her childhood and adolescence in Beirut where she studied philosophy at the Lebanese University in Beirut. She then lived in Montreal for three years, and finally established herself in Cairo in 2001. Naturally she draws many influences from the cultures, nationalities, customs and people she has come across. She then transfers all those encounters, histories, and experiences into emotions and to the canvases.
Leaning towards expressionism on large canvas, Mardam Bey’s works also carry a big dosage of imagination, often inviting abstract strokes to her oils. She is not confined to one style, one technique or one palette. Mardam Bey assimilates life freely and freely portrays her understanding of it.
Combining east and west in her creative journey, Mardam Bey’s boundless reservoir of stories have been exhibited in the most prestigious international halls
