Notepad
Text: Ali Al-Fatlawi, Newspaper and Arabic schoolbook
,talker: Ahmed Alismaili, Jasm Altemimi, Hussein Alimaili , Kadem, Alamir Taha and Amir Alasadi

animated figure is walking up and down in a closed room and listening to the news. His black and white animation uses a very sophisticated sound workand the strength of the simplest graphic tools. He is walking up and down between reality and the media, the inner reality of people from Baghdad in real life, the reality of the community in conversations with other people. Also we can hear Arabic language lessons in the background. Has he translated his German lessons to Arabic, or is it about everyday life in exile, where many Arab intellectuals make their living by giving Arab language classes? He creates a sensitive balance between all this, as if all his personality would be made of thread so transparent, that outer reality and virtual mediated powers fluctuated through the lines. Actually I could write many poetical things like this last sentence about this work, but whatever I write would seem a bit false, all my metaphors would be kitschy. It often happens when I come across a good graphic work and when I am touched by the strength and simplicity of a fine drawing. I think one of the reasons of this is that drawing speaks a universal language. It is hard to approach it by the words of an art critic. Also this universal language, the direct and simple way a drawing can speak is independent from the fact whether it was made by an artist and about people grown up in Baghdad, in New York or in Bratislava. Wathiq al Ameri’s work is full of sincerity a universal visual language can afford. Still his drawings and montages speak about the situation when there is no balance between physical possibilities and situation of the individual in exile. Through this they also speak earnestly about what art is and is not able to achieve during the war.