The Protection of Ritual

By Julia Behrens

Studded with spikes, crenellations, wings, at times fortress-like, at others organically flowing, and always highly idiosyncratic: the ceramics of Cholud Kassem. Vaguely reminiscent of vases, they feature two- or three-color glazes, in hues of deep red, light blue, turquoise, orange.

Together they form a very lively ensemble, shaped by interesting references. No two pieces are alike; each is composed individually and, as a container, is of uncertain functionality. One can hardly imagine that they could ever serve as a »vessel«. But one might be mistaken.

With her first sculptural works, the artist, born in Baghdad in 1956, is breaking new ground. And with the coherent spatial expansion of her painting she finds her way to a holistic embodiment of her artistic vision that is based on more than three-dimensionality.

Like all Kassem’s creative expressions, the ceramics are permeated by a fascinating dichotomy of the familiar and the unknown. Their seemingly associative language evokes thoughts that cannot fulfill the expectations of recognition. And sometimes this phenomenological defensive stance, which confines viewers within their perceptive limitations, is surprisingly congruent with a certain fortress-like demeanor of that which is represented.

This is also true of the so-called »Schutzlinge«, (a word coined by the artist and similar to the German word for those who are protected), the artist’s first publicly presented pictorial series from the second half of the 1990s. With almost overwhelming simplicity, symbolic, often monochrome shapes emerge from a white background. Very freely arranged segments of circles, pointed ovals, triangles combine with black, sometimes sharply tapered lines to form a structure that is neither abstract nor concrete nor representational. One does imagine, it is true, that one is seeing a protective shield here, a coat of arms there. But then these are equipped with spears or spikes, which, while they do fit thematically, also link the various elements together into an unusual, seemingly figurative, enigmatic apparition. An apparition that is almost auratic.

Because Kassem’s artistic language is so focused on the essentials, one hardly suspects any biographical elements behind it. And yet, more than anything else it is personal experiences that have led the artist to her unmistakable style. »My artworks are created as part of a process, without a preconceived notion. They arise from experience, from memory,« she explains. And since her childhood she has been moving within a very broad cultural force field.

Cholud Kassem was born in Baghdad in 1956 and moved to Germany with her parents as a young child. When her mother returned to Iraq after only a few months, Kassem’s father sent her brother and her to live with German foster parents for seven years in Viernheim, a town near Heidelberg, Germany, where she now lives. There they attended a Catholic kindergarten and were subsequently baptized and received their First Communion. This was followed by a two-year stay at a group home in Mannheim that was run by nuns. Only then did the newly married father bring the children back to his home, to live with him again.

Kassem left home at a young age, went through professional training as a dental assistant and then completed a degree program at the University of Heidelberg’s School of Education, majoring in German, geography, and art. After a difficult period, full of intensive soul-searching, she decided against a teaching career in favor of a life as a freelance artist.

Kassem relates her story in her studio in Heidelberg-Kirchheim, which is housed in a former schnapps distillery. You first enter her showroom in a spacious repurposed storefront, whose newly plastered, unpainted walls are ideal for displaying her various two-dimensional series. This opens into a smaller, open space where Kassem receives visitors and stores finished works. Here her aesthetic sensibility is reflected in a custom-built metal structure that frames a sofa and a display cabinet. Another striking touch are the colorfully glazed ceramic vases from the 1960s and 1970s that are grouped above the entrance to the showroom: pieces that were collected by the artist between 2021 and 2022 and which show parallels with her work, in terms of not only style but also content.

Through the back courtyard you enter the studio itself: a whitewashed space on the second floor of the rear building, where the distilled schnapps used to be bottled. The space is dominated by three large-scale, still unfinished works on the back wall, various shelves that were part of the distillery, and a vast table in the middle of the room. The table is the central hub, where ideas are envisioned and their execution is planned. On one side she has placed numerous jars with pigments, acrylic binding agents, brushes, and oil pastel crayons. And on the other, boxes full of variously treated scraps of paper, from which she has developed some of her series. Only for the larger formats, all of which she executes on photographic cardboard, does she use the studio’s floor as a work surface.
Cholud Kassem conceptualizes her work in series, with impressive stringency. This, like each step of her process, is not intentional but, rather, the result of a particular creative phase, which can last for several years. In analogy with the fact that each new painterly theme – as in the case of the »Schutzlinge« – emerges from a profound, unconscious grappling with specific events, the artist allows the expression to emerge from the pictorial ground and to manifest in layers on the pictorial surface. She often scratches or wipes off what has already been formulated and paints it over with white. She also intervenes at the end, allowing the light-colored background, as the surface that ultimately determines everything, to become the guiding design authority. What lies beneath still shines through enigmatically.

Deconstruction as the basis for an extremely vital mode of production is also evident in subsequent series, where the techniques of overpainting and overglueing are also used. In her series »Pfeile« (Arrows) (2002-2005) and »Wudus« (Voodoos) (2004-2007), Kassem builds collages on and with transparent paper, thus introducing an unusual haptic texture that is reminiscent of a leathery epidermis. In the »Wudus«, which display only eyes or mouths, this impression is further enhanced by using kite paper, which harmonizes especially well with their figurative appearance.

In each case, Kassem makes the sequence of her artistic inspirations transparent, in the truest sense of the word. And finally, with her sometimes enigmatic titles, which, like her pictures, often just narrowly miss the tangible, she reveals something of their origin.

When these works were created, Kassem had long been known in the Rhine Neckar region of Germany. In the winter of 2000/2001, the Heidelberg Kunstverein devoted a solo exhibition to her work. Over the years she has been represented by various regional and national galleries and exhibited in numerous institutions, such as the Kunstvereine (contemporary art associations) of Worms, Speyer, and Viernheim. She finds collectors who are also fascinated by subsequent stages of her work, such as the series »… es sei den, was außen ist« (Unless What is Outside), 2010-2013, in which she looks deeply at her Catholic upbringing. On photographic cardboard, she designs garments that, within their varied unity, are characterized by new kinds of ornamentation, such as baptismal and Sunday clothes, based on the church services and sacraments she experiences as ceremonial. In these images, the semantic foreshortenings are less pronounced than in the condensed, cloak-like forms, which only at second glance make one think of the robes of dignitaries or religious saints. Although all the pieces remain two-dimensional, they seem to become the epitome of an ambivalent shell of security. Like a kind of externally self-protecting identity that Kassem is encouraged to find within the framework of liturgical ceremonies, but which does not correspond to her actual origins.

Only in 2015 is the artist able to experience a reunion with her mother, and, in Turkey, with the maternal branch of the family, who live spread out all around the world. Suddenly many pieces come together; she feels a sense of kinship with her highly educated relatives from the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and the USA. But the fact that she is not a Muslim creates friction with her devoutly religious aunts, uncles and cousins.

Kassem translates her new experiences and impressions into two new series, »Schutzhelme« (Protective Helmets) and »Tarnhelme« (Camouflage Helmets) (2015–2019), into which she incorporates some Oriental patterns and signets, such as the »Eye of Fatima«, and later into the series »Burka Hidschab Nonnenschleier« (Burka Hijab Nun’s Veil) (2018-2019). In the latter she demonstrates, in an astonishing way, obvious parallels in religious dogmatism, which become evident through the depictions of head and body coverings in both the Christian and the Muslim world. Here, with her minimalism, as basic as it is sophisticated, she delves into the theme by combining elements from earlier works and introducing the dominant use of graphite.

The artist begins to extend this series into the realm of installation in several exhibition featuring a centrally placed oriental carpet, two baptismal cups on an altar-like piece of furniture, and a video with photographs and documents from her life. Despite the simplicity of this »sacral« mise-en-scène, here Cholud Kassem points emphatically to the great cultural contrasts that arise from her biography, but which she now knows how to meld together in her art in a both critical and conciliatory fashion.

But before this can be fully realized, the Coronavirus puts everything on hold and she creates – after a period of contemplation – the series »Weeping Pillows« (2020–2023): a group of works which, as the maximum expression of incomprehensible times, she executes in a process new to her work, entirely on a graphite-black pictorial ground.

One year later, the artist starts to discover her fascination with the glazed vases described earlier. This time the focus is not on her own story, but on that of the people who sell the pieces to her on an online platform. For, along with the vessels, Kassem also collects the thoughts that connect the previous owners with the vases, and she presents both in the video »West German Pottery«. Because of the astounding similarity to her own work, it is only natural that she herself begins to paint vases, in a series she calls »Erinnerungsspeicher« (2021) (Memory Containers), after which she also embarks on creating ceramics sculpturally, in the series »Trutzburgen« (Fortresses) described above.

In fact, over time it becomes clear how closely the »Schutzlinge«, for instance, are related to the »Tarnhelme«, or the »Wudus« to the »Burkas«, or the sacral clothing to the vases. This is not only because of their shapes, which turn out to be remarkably fluid. Rather, it is also because of the original, overarching function of these works, which are remarkable in their intentional »application« in space: »My art always has to do with my own body. I position my own self behind the »Schutzlinge« for protection. The »Pfeile« have a more aggressive, combative element; the »Schutzhelme« and »Tarnhelme« are something I can put on for ritual protection. I love rituals. They correspond to a fundamental need of human beings to express wishes and deal with threats«, Kassem explains.

This statement ultimately points to the source of the great, auratic effect of her work. For, in a sense, Cholud Kassem takes art back to its original, cultic purpose, that is, its transcendent meaning, which, according to Walter Benjamin, has been largely lost through secularization. And this intention can be felt in a special way, by any who are open to it.