Halim Al-Karim (Iraqi, b. 1963)

Two dark, almost sombre, silhouettes are represented in Goddess of Beirut. These figures appear to be women, as their dresses come down too short and make their high heels clearly visible. Yet the blurred image which Halim Al-Karim has created contains a somewhat lyrical mysticism. The figures seem to be floating within, in or out of the photograph, confirming Al-Karims statement that The out of focus images imply an uncertainty of context, time and place. Despite this timelessness and intangibility of his photograph, Al-Karim succeeds in conveying an aspect of his vision of an urban society free of violence. The two womens elegance and femininity with their glamorous high heels are shadowed by the traditional black dress and their blank ghostly faces, which masks their true identity. The term goddess which the artist uses in the title brings back Al-Karim to his painful childhood, when he was hiding in the desert from Saddam Husseins regime during the First Gulf War. He survived his three years in the desert only through the help of a Bedouin woman, who brought him food and water and also taught him about gypsy and mystical customs. These two Goddesses of Beirut seem to directly reflect Al-Karims imagination from when he was a child, depicting the strange deities described by the Bedouin woman as undefined figures from a mirage-like world.