Reflections: Besher Koushaji
He began his artistic career in painting buildings, relying on his style of drawing familiar houses and streets. Poetically captures the spirit of displacement and disorientation through his abstract works. Seeking refuge in Jordan back in 2012, his artistic work began to reflect the reflections of his memories with reality in the themes of houses, personalities and faces of his life.
Koushaji uses his art to create references to people he has left behind. By breaking down figures / cityscapes to their most basic elements through lines and sections, he creates a distortion of his original subject as a subtle way of representing loss. Many of the buildings previously painted by the artist have been destroyed, so the artist, through his continuous work, tries to re-assemble the images from his memories, which are reflected in his paintings in an unclear and confused manner. The people appear in his paintings in the form of fancies of faces and bodies, towards an abstract, of colours and shapes, memories are filled with something that appears through broken lenses.
In fact he started using his art to reference his homeland by breaking down the cityscape image through lines and sections. Layer over a layer. Forming a distorted image as a subtle way of representing loss Besher finds himself continuously reminiscent of the beauty that was Syria, consumed by vivid memories of his past that have now been distorted by the war.
They are not mere distortions; the technique he uses breaks characters and consists of complex patterns: calligraphy, the imagination of buildings and places, and the shadows of other places. The layers reflect the complexity that keeps the artist away from a country that becomes more distant with time. When Koushaji begins to create his paintings, he begins with a realistic figure and then makes adjustments to the image by adding lines, shapes. "My memories are fading, they're no longer as clear as before," says Koushaji. "This is reflected on the plate whenever I try to reconstruct the picture again."
He finds peace in reconstructing and deconstructing images of his past, through his style of layering. His once joyful memories now distorted by the destruction of his beloved country which held his great love, his warm home, and family.
Through his layering he finds himself visually communicating endless memories of his lost land and lost life. His graphic design background can also be seen as a very strong influence to his work. Confusing Koushaji paintings, reflections on loss and longing, honest attempt to heal the distance that is becoming more difficult to connect. They are reflections of missing or distant objects, not accurate representations of a world at hand, but mirrors that show how time, distance and history have worked to keep the artist away from his world.
