a visual journal of maldives

Mamduh Waheed, Work in Progress, acrylic on canvas, 2 x 3 feet, 2007

Mamduh Waheed, Work in Progress (detail), acrylic on canvas, 2 x 3 feet, 2007

This is a poster for a Maldivian feature film recently released. It is right in front of the entrance to the house where I live in Male. The literal translation of the title of the film ‘Loabi Loabin’, is ‘Love, with Love’.

mw 2007

Mohamed Azzam, Untitled, Acrylic on Canvas, 2007

Mohamed Azzam, Untitled, Acrylic on Canvas (Detail), 2007

Marie Omar, Oil, coffee, ink on Canvas, 2007

I came across this intriguing fellow during a recent visit to the Craft Museum (officially the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum) in Delhi, India. This is a Bhuta sculpture dating back from the 18th century. The museum houses several galleries and one of them is devoted to Bhuta Sculptures. The Bhutas of Southern India used this and other similar statues of deities and animals carved from jackfruit timber in sacred rituals.

What really fascinated me about this one is its similarity to a fiigure I have been experimenting with in my ‘Stranger’ series of drawing and paintings (if you scroll back on the site, you will see some). And this again reiterates some of the theories that inform my artistic practice; like Jung’s concept of the ‘collective unconscious’, etc. The idea that out there is an unconsious, to which all of us tap into at some point; hence the similarity of ideas generated in different times, in different places. It points to an eternal stream of the residue of human thoughts and emotions.

mw 2007