Maria Saleh Mahmeed

Charcoal on canvas, 300 X 210 cm. 2015

Is this how it looks when the curtains of life are finally drawn, and a bright light floods in to testify that it is all over? Is this what the last moments look like; the limbs stretch for the very last time, before the body gather into itself? Does this tender artwork outline the instant in which the soul departs from the body and hovers above it? It is a depiction of the soul as it formalizes or disintegrates, as it surrounds the one that passed away to bid him a final farewell.
In her art, Saleh Mahmeed engages with the spiritual and physical ties between a man and the land from which he comes, and to which he will return in the end. A bond that carries with it infinite loss and pain.