New Paintings: Juma Al Haj

In his paintings and drawings, Al Haj transcends the confines of calligraphy as he documents individual experiences. His abstract notations, seemingly born of the unconscious, belie a methodical and calculated process,  rooted in his personal journals.

Journaling has been a daily practice of mine ever since grade school. Sometimes I stop for periods of time but I do have a great deal of my life documented. What is intriguing is that every time I take a small break from journaling, I immediately pick up the paintbrush. Both practices feed and support each other. Journaling creates the narrative which my paintings convey.

For Al Haj, the act of writing transcends mere documentation of thoughts and experiences. Reflections on texts found in various sources, including of spiritual origin like the Quran, often consume his pages and serve as a prologue to his artistic expression.

Spiritual text, mainly the Quran and the Abrahamic books provide a main source of inspiration for me. The words and descriptions used in these books- specifically the Quran- are extremely beautiful and are hard to convey. I have witnessed a few people obtain a better understanding of some quranic concepts through my paintings and that’s a great feeling.

As he deconstructs the formal elements of script in his artworks, Al Haj imbues his paintings with a sense of familiarity. The compositions – often baring time and date stamps, with dynamic lines and strikethroughs confined within borders – appear like pages lifted out of a journal.

While maintaining his usual technique of abstracted text, Al Haj's recent work suggests a new direction in his practice. This is evident in his transition from script to a tally system and the intricate layering of marks across the canvases.

The transition from abstracted text to the tally system was not surprising to me. I’ve always considered the tally system a form of documentation. As a child in Islamic studies class, I would imagine the angels recording our good deeds with quills on plain sheets of paper using the tally system. I don’t generally have a specific number of layers in mind - I stop when the painting feels complete.