New Delhi
Hatem Aarfa is a master calligraphy artist and a wonderful graphic designer whose work has received immense appreciation across the world. Dr Amna Mirza of Delhi University speaks to him on his art and life. Excerpts from the recorded interview:
You know, I'm sure you must be receiving so much appreciation at various national and international forums now telephoning what has been your motivation, the driving forces in this art form where you find your inspiration, how can we.
Thank you. Thanks for this interview and your introduction to answer your question. The calligraphy art mainly depends on the meaning of the words I'm writing. So this is the main thing that. Direct to me to write or to express some feeling or some idea, in the world, sometimes I'm writing at a traditional. In a traditional way or other than our time, I think this is from Quran or hadis sheriff or even a modern one.
So the meaning and the words themselves inspire me and make me want to address it somehow. Sometimes I want to do it in a very normal or in a traditional race and play my own to make something new and make it in, kind of a shape, and throw a shape using the world itself. So it has a variety, but the main thing is the meaning of what I am reading. I like to read a lot. I like to hear new kinds of poems and songs from everywhere. And, the Arab language has a lot of details when you try to exhibit it. You can imagine a lot of ways to do this.
That's a very interesting huddling, you know, you know, you know, as you see, that how your work, especially calligraphy as an art is indeed very deep. I mean, it's not only about rediscovering many hidden aspects, but it's also about relooking at many deeper meanings. So yes, you know your words being so thought-provoking, tell something, you know with this inspiration, what's the essence of your work or how do you define something as integral to your work?
And as I told you. The meaning of for itself, make me, wants to express it in a very different way, sometimes just the rules, of the way of writing every letter has its own rule to write it and. To master it you need to get, many times to just, write. Even one, letter, an alif elephant tell letter. Ha, just write one letter. You need to write vex it many times. I need to show it to my teachers again and again and read it to myself in different forms. So even one word, even one letter, a nickname address it many times, it has a lot of details in it, and it's like music and you may, you may know, the main courses, the main, tunes but how you mix it to make something you need a lot of time and a lot of. Ah watching and getting inspiration from everything. So the main thing is the rules and looking at all the fields in the world that I think. To try to catch something new and to express it with your art because you can see everything, in calligraphy. When you back to history and try to remember how is, the first man wanted to write his thoughts on the cave walls and he just drove some stuff by the time these drawings became a language in the civilizations in different ways. So what I'm writing and when I'm writing calligraphy, it's like containing delivering the first thing that the man saw around him in nature when he saw the tree and the sun and he wanted to tell the story about it somehow in a very simple way by the time life is more complicated and you need to service it in a more heat wave. So that's what I'm feeling. I'm just. Contains a very deep message of writing off, it is. The trials of humans exhibit their feelings and thoughts. And it's endless bruises.
That's very, very interesting. You know, you know, you had a journey to like every work that you must be doing must be taking you toward something new like, you know, letting give you, experience some new inside some new ideas now tell us something, have this practice or to say. This very unique artistic art form that you are into, does it change your ideas with time, does every, piece that you come up with or any. You know, work that you come up with, does it change to some kind of a personal transformation within you, does it leads to that?
Yes, it’s very interesting for me to show my work to people and, see the different reactions, I get from them. Some people who know the Arabic language, get it, quickly, some people of them even if they speak Arabic, it's hard for them to read, complicated chips sometimes. Some don't know the Arabic language at all, but they find something in the shape. Like, I'm mainly I'm from Egypt when I came to turkey, turkey, it doesn't speak Arabic but they gave a lot of thought and a lot of effort to the Islamic arts as they care about it. They can do the calligraphy letters as you can write them. Like they are drawing if and they, even if they don't know the language itself, so I get a lot of different reactions from people in turkey from an Arab country like Jordan when I been there from u.s.a. of France and these different thoughts make me feel that. So what I'm doing is not just about the language is not, just about my civilization or culture. It's, it's about the whole order like I exhibit so. The previous question is just a way to tell your story in shape, even if it looks like a language. But it's different chips that everyone can get in different and their actions are helping me to make a new thing. And keep thinking about a different clip differently. And it helps me show my work to a very different and wide variety of people.
That's very interesting. That is how your art is, you know not just about a language. It's also about, you know, a way to narrate a story and most important how it kindles you and provokes you to think differently. Very interesting happen. With that, let's come to the other side of the art now, you know at always communicate and you know in this process of communication in this process of dialogue, new words and audiences play a very important role. Now you just mentioned about you know some of the difficulties that people not knowing the Arabic language. So how do you nurture your audiences or to put it in a very simple manner, how do you promote your work?
I started as a graphic designer 17 years ago and looking for a graphic designer to help with its needs too. Focus on what people want when I get a new customer, he won't like a business card for himself or for a panel he will go somewhere. I dealt with a very different. People who, get interested in very different things. That helped me to quickly somehow find the. Things that will. They will find themselves and they will find it will suit them somehow. So I could have a sense of the public convenience if I could say that. What will get likes from a beacon or something at the same time I'm just expressing my thoughts and I think my thoughts are common in, is common with a lot of different people. I just focus on doing my best in the thing I'm doing is outwork and doing and, most of the time I get the reactions I expected, by time with the experience. Because most of our main feeling as a human is the same when you speak about anything emotional or something, you, waiting in the future or something most of the time you will find a lot of people on the same page with you and that's why I just mean artwork and I just leave it there sometimes I feel that people get affected about it and talk about it like it.
Are their work and they keep sharing it and talking about it to be able even more than me? Ah, people just I don't even know them or something like that. So just, when I feel the. When I have like a deep feeling about the artwork I'm doing, I just give it my best thoughts. And the result is exactly like a sibling here unless we will just want to share about it and to share it and talk about it all the time. And that's how I get a lot of new followers over time.
This very, very interesting happened that human emotions somewhere being same everywhere and how you use the fashion of your art to reach out to a bigger canvas. Very interesting. Okay. Have them help us understand. Now we all know that artistic Indian worlds are never easy. You know, at ourselves in any, realm they face a lot of challenges, you know, from the virtual to the performing arts to any other, running ads is never an easy way, and for want to add to that artist per server sensitive people. Now, as for you looking at the present circumstances, because you also being a graphic designer, as for you in the present day circumstances, what kind of challenges do you see that exist for calligraphy as art and more for important calligraphy as the artistic discipline?
The main challenge is for most people, art is not a priority thing. The most important thing is the food or clothes or the home where I live, people most of the time think about it more. Thinking about art, but for the artist is. It's coming before food and before everything, I just find everything in art and he can't leave without it, but most people most of the time live without it. So this is a problem there and because you put a cost for your artwork and. You say you can't think. About it, in different ways, you feel that you will work, deserve this amount of cost. Because you gave it a lot of effort and you need, you need a lot a long time, to get in, this level. So. This is a problem, but as long as you are keeping that thing in that commercial and, in the artist field at the same time you you are trying to make something that will be. Helping people or people that say will find any pamphlet in it. And that will change the game a little for you. Because you can just think about the art as it's important and people will care about it by themselves without any reason you need to, reduce something that will make we will feel that you will that they will meet it and they will find gems of this. In it somehow. So this is the challenge. I'm not the very start of this. That's what I'm keeping in myself. If I found any challenge or anything hard, that's how I was treated or i.i., how I was dealing with these issues since I began because there were a lot of artists in history, who had. Problems like this. Some of them could, eh, solve it. Some of them didn't. I also, remember the two examples of, vanguard and Picasso because van Gogh didn't tell anything while he is living. He just sold one artwork for some relative. And because she knew him or something. But because so started selling his artwork when he was a child because his father was an artist as well. So, it's not too just. The. About doing your art without thinking about people or without thinking about what will people need once you think about it and find somehow to mix it between what you need to produce and what we people need to have, in this midway, I think. Artists could succeed and, will not have any problems with this.
That's very interesting again from a very new perspective to you know survival and success of an artist, oh, okay, happen. Let's jump more into your art, you know you know calligraphy, your calligraphy is beautiful. Every piece that you have done and put up on your web page, has so much deeper in store. So what's your most valued skill in calligraphy?
I think creating shapes using calligraphy is a thing good at, I think, and I like to do it that's actually what brought me to the field of calligraphy when I saw some shapes. Of course, I'm not the first one who did this. But, when I found that calligraphy could be like, kind of, tools to draw anything you want. I liked this idea and I'm giving trying, to reduce it in different ways, especially with Qur’an because when I read it, I found a lot of images when I'm reading it as this virus could be in this image. I could write it somehow in a shape and not unless we were thinking about it most of the time. They think about it in a traditional way how to and just not, something i. I'm not doing, of course, I'm I do them both. I do both of these trials. I write it in a traditional and also. In other words. I think this is not fast reluctant enough, not fast and simple, but the main thing is drawing using calligraphy.
That's very interesting from creating shapes to. You know, always exploring new things, okay to add something about your first experience of working as a professional or just for calligraphy. How would that be?
The first thing was artwork. It wasn't really good when you think about the beginning for an artist, most of the US doesn't want to re-remember it actually because, in the beginning, they make a lot of mistakes. But I remember the first thing that was like a hit for me and, changed everything for me. It was, for, verses from Surat Yasin, I wrote I kept anything it for like a year I kept showing it to my teacher's ornament ornamenting teacher and the calligraphy teacher. I kept editing it for, like a year and when I make a video for the idiotic, the result was perfect and its speed, split it everywhere I found. I got a lot of messages from USA next Indian everywhere and it was the first time for me that I found one of my artworks that get all this. Spreading it. Why I like it.
Okay, that's interesting. Okay. Any, piece of your calligraphy work that you've done and you're proud of that. Or if any of your work, is very dear to my heart.
This is the same as asking a mother who is your favorite daughter or your favorite son and I could feel something like this. While I'm doing artwork and a specific one while doing it, I feel it's so special and I like it so much once I end it, I'm thinking about the next 1 and just when I look back, I found that. The mistakes are little mistakes I made here or here. I hope that no one knows it or something, because all the time you make mistakes and no one is perfect and every artwork, especially when. You are learning all the time so you have a new source about everything, so I can't have this feeling for a long time even if I had this it will be for like minutes and it will go and I think about the next one. Should I make it again, sometimes more customers and customers ask for the same thing? I do it again and again, and every time I am trying to make it better. So everything I do I'm proud of for like a few minutes and then it goes.
That's very interesting. Okay. Haven't you got a beautiful journey as we have just been talking about that now, I'm sure, you know whenever we are there an artistic journey, there are multiple opinions, multiple perspectives, and advisors. So what is the best advice that you received in your that you received in this journey and something that you like to share with future you know artists who would like to you know get into calligraphy?
I think the best thing I even kept telling myself and I thought about it a long time ago, of course, I hear it from a lot of different teachers in different ways, is what are you doing is important in what it is. Not what it is. Look like, what is. What is it is not what the artwork looks like because sometimes your artwork is? Looks like it's very good and it has no mistakes for some people, but as the one who created it, you can see the. There are mistakes and or any problems you had with it. You can see it well, and this is the most important thing is the reality of what you are doing you should be the one who knows the reality of, what you get, and how long it takes. Have the idea. Came to have you, and processed it. To get the final narrative. And this is the most important thing that doesn't. The artist shouldn't look at the effect on the Vivo or the reaction doesn't focus on it. You need to focus on what he sees in his artwork and how how to develop it over time.
Oh, that's very important that you must think that what you do is important where you are interested inside now, how do you. You know. Things are changing now, you know, we know that technology is an important part of our lives. Technology is also revamping our you know art for that matter. You know, there was a time when you know, a normal going cinema, you know, going to cinema hold and theatre will be in pain, but now with the rise of o.t.t., things have changed on the media front. Do you think that technology rise of technology as an integral part of our lives? What impact is that had on calligraphy as art or maybe, let me put it the same here for you? So you think that technology, you know, is important to promote your work. Does it help you?
Yes, surely as a graphic designer, I started to just make everything on the computer by the time I felt like I need to go in the monitor to change some stuff by hand. I needed to use my hand in the art, but you can't put the technology away in something like this. You need to, keep knowing all the updates in, the technology, and also, the traditional way is not just. Something old happened in the past and it's not evolving by the time I see it. Is the same as technology. It's all it's also evolving. By the way, we will look into it. So when you look at the result in like competitions of Arab calligraphy three years, you'll. It's evolving. It's not the same as 100 years ago, all the calligraphers. And having done something new over time and suppressing the results in new ways. So both aspect is so important, even both technology and the hand, writing evolving.
Oh, that's very interesting again, the last one from your side. Tell us something about your future work. What do we see in some kind of innovations coming forward in your work to calligraphy, what's in store for the future, please update the US?
I have no idea if you have any information about this, just tell me, but I hope that some boxes will. A. Create new chances I can create a. How could I. And the last thing I made was, it should be my answer actually for the question of what I am proud of is the last thing as the last project I made was as a mosque and u.s.a. in North Carolina, I wrote all the calligraphy artworks. It helps with my wife as well. She is also an artist and has me in my work sometimes, together we created all the artwork and the mosque and when I went there I hooked on the dome. The old calligraphy on the dome and I think this is the most thing I'm proud of for now I hope this kind of project because it was the first time that I create something like this, 0 and I will, I need all the details about it before I participated in the projects like this. I participated in restoration in mosques and stuff like this because this was the first time that I take the whole project. I hope that I have something like this again because it was the best, the best experience and the most. Hard and, eh. Enjoyable 1. I, I ever made, I took for like, I took more than three weeks working on it. It was hard and. Took a lot of effort for me to be in the in a good result in the end, but at the same time, I enjoyed it. It was the best thing I will do. I hope that I could find chances like this again soon and work in. And more projects like this.
Right. So it was indeed very interesting how they are talking to you trying to understand the deeper insights of your art. Trying to know your motivation, and inspiration for your art and most important, like your advice to everyone that do what you think is important. Focus on the idea, focus on the odd happy Murphy. Thank you so much for sparing some of your precious time and joining the US on this very interesting conversation. And I was the voice we wish you all the very best for the future. May you keep receiving great appreciation at various forums for your very unique and splendid art. So once again, happy Martha, thank you so much for joining the US at our the world is. Thanks,
Transcribed by Shaista Fatima
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