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Ali Rahamad (Mabuha)
310-801-0280
aliamstudio52@yahoo.com
www.amstudio52.com
Ali Rahamad, who works under the name Ali Mabuha, is a self taught artist. His work has been influenced by his personal journeys and experiences throughout the world. Born in Malaysia in 1952, he has since traveled extensively to Singapore, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, England, Yugoslavia, France, Italy, Austria, Egypt, Hong Kong, Luxemburg, Thailand, Philippines, Canada, Indonesia, Mexico, Colombia and the United States. He spent several years in Germany, working on series of abstract surrealism before moving to make to Los Angeles in 1985.
While some of his works portray the consequences of war, oppression and tyranny, other focus on his personal hopes, and passion for love and beauty.
“I paint, and I paint and I paint; and the paint is me, dancing in the space with different melodies. The journey holds us together; as we go through this world we are not apart . Just think how would the world be without song or without music? How would it be without color? Imagine the night without dreams; the day without distances and countries without culture. Imagine our lives without love and feeling and objects without form and beauty.”
In his Twin Towers series (see examples page 2) the Artist shares his pain, asking what drives men to the lowest level of darkness and what we have learned from that terrible day. At the same time his paintings plead for hope encouraging us to join hands, hold our children, our families and loved ones and embrace the world together.
Al Boime, an art historian & professor at the Department of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and has also authored A Social History of Modern Art, Volumes. 1 & 2, has written these words about Ali and his art:
“Ali Rahamad, native of Malaysia and citizen of the world, wends his way through the complexities and conflicts of the modern world with labyrinthine skeins of pigment. Emerging from a humble village of rubber tappers, he displayed precocious artistic gifts, carving novel wood and stone sculptures even before adolescence. Ali’s art has always been predicated on the urgent need for a healing of the injured environment and its human fallout. His extraordinary work deserves to be better known, especially as a revelation of his insightful intelligence and passionate defiance of social injustice and needless, catastrophic wars. For Ali the birds represent freedom and peace, and the openness of mind that is so needed to restore harmony to the troubled world.
However much that world has changed over the course of the last century the new millennium finds artists like Ali Rahamad hard at work in his solitary effort to engage critical issues of self-, cultural, and national identity. His work challenges the prevailing stereotype of the apolitical artist, and he has shown great courage in his grappling with some of the more pressing concerns of the day and protesting the oppressive conditions that exist under the cloak of patriotic rhetoric and hollow ideals. He has stripped away the veil of this rhetoric to expose the wellsprings of tyranny in vivid and unforgettable imagery. At the same time, he has also made an effort to tap into the mystical links between human beings and the natural environment, promoting a more spiritualized, and thus more universal, vision of painless progress attended by life and peace instead of discord and death.”
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2009 “Open Call 2009” Los Angeles Municipal Gallery, Barnsdall Park, L.A.
2009 South Asian American Art Festival, Los Angeles, CA (Group Show)
2009 Freedom & Art at Mount Beacon Fine Art Gallery, NY (Group Show)
2008 “MY Collection: Rahime Harun” National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
2007 Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Barnsdall Park, Los Angeles (Group Show)
2007 Hamilton & Tracy Park Gallery, Los Angeles (Group Show)
2007 "V-Day," Vagina Monologues at the Directors Guild of America, Los Angeles
2006 James Gray Gallery, Malibu Arts Association, Juried Exhibition Los Angeles
2006 US Bank, Malibu, CA (Solo Exhibition)
2006 "XL Art Show," XOAS Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Group Show)
2006 Darling Musa Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Group Show)
2006 "A Beautiful Mind," Gallery Tangsi, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
2005 "50th Anniversary Gala & Art Show," Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, L.A.
1992 "Mixed Media and Sculpture," Los Angeles Art Association (Group Show)
1991 "Art and Poetry," Consulate General of Indonesia, L.A.
**many more exhibitions in previous years in Europe and S.E. Asia**
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* None of the artworks may be copied or reproduced without the written permission of the Artist