Artworks 19
Arabesques 1
Date of creation2: 
Ca. 1985s
Medium: 
Mixed Media on Carton
Artwork Commentary: 

The lines of Madiha Umar remind us of the lines of Juan Miro. Still, here, we face an oriental heritage, civilization, and artist, and the difference between the two lines is as vast and clear as the difference between two cultures and two environments. The artist crowded the surface of her painting with thick lines and seemingly unfamiliar shapes, decorations, embroideries, and miniatures, an abstraction of forms and an intensity of lines. No matter how abstract the oriental seems, it returns to nature, where the underlying unconscious symbols relate to the kingdom of eternal existence. From aesthetically abstract craftsmanship and miniatures to plant and flower details, botanists say that the female flower parts contain the pistil with its sticky stigma, which spreads pollen, and then its stem and ovary, which is the part that produces the eggs and disseminates them. Male flower parts are stamens (which produce pollen grains with their roots and threads) and nectar, which attract insects. In this work, the artist stripped Arabic letters, which, as I can interpret it, is an allusion to an eternal process in nature in which organisms and plants reproduce to preserve the species and the survival and continuation of life.

Arabic Title: 
الأرابيسك 1
Arabic Medium: 
مواد مختلفة على كرتون