Through painting and music, human beings are led to live exceptional experiences, without having to pay the price; they are shortcuts of life that lift one towards higher spheres.
S. Joukhadar
War
She emerges from the horizon, leaving behind her a black trail of devastation. In her impulse and fervour, she leans over, covers the sky with her wings, and one sees only her face. In the form of a charred tree, burnt and bent by the storm, it takes root in the dark red of the blood of massacres, attacks and assassinations, in the black of hatred, vengeance and cupidity, and in the dull and dirty green and of troubled waters. All this evil carried by the roots condenses and rises in the trunk like a tornado, to burst in the blood and fire of the jubilation of the first attacks. Then it finally explodes in an incandescent ball, unveiling the true face of the War. She surprises us with her hysterical smile, heralding a demonic laugh that would reverberate in echoes.
Calm appearance
By taking a Pharaoh (Thutmose III) as model, Joukhadar wished – and how symbolic a choice! – to represent an archetype. The one on the banknotes, the effigies and medals. The archetypal leader, the political leader, the big corporate patron, the oligarch, the archetype of all men who hold immense power and still carry on their faces a very quiet mask, steadfast, superior, almost hieratic, and nothing sensual. An impenetrable and impervious mask that completely hides their true thoughts.
Death
The Dead Man? Death?
One meeting with him.
One reflection on Death.
Certainly not a banal and naïve representation in the form of a skeleton, a skull or a Reaper. Indeed, this work emanates from a person familiar with metaphysical reflections and who, before being an artist, received an education destining him for functions of a spiritual order.
Extrovert – Introvert
This is not a simplistic illustration of the terms introvert / extrovert, but a very complex and subtle reading. These two works were produced at the same time, the same week. Note the watercolour-lead pencil opposition, colour and lack of colour. The framing is very intimate. One person is shown as in an interior. It is not a great hall, it is a small room. There is an intimate bedroom lighting, not the lighting of a room lit by a chandelier. The lighting is condensed. For the other, lighting comes from everywhere. It is open air and in infinite spaces.
Initiate
In the glacial cold of the solitude of the mountain tops, the light of the invocation of Thee gives me warmth.
S. Joukhadar
On the balcony
A moment of solitude and introspection into which a person can slip, experience regret and an intense desire for renewal. Neither young nor elderly, perhaps in her thirties, she was in the company of friends or family. They had taken advantage of a passing October-November sun to take tea on the balcony. Perhaps a subject that came up, perhaps a sound or someone on the street, or something else, triggered a host of memories into which she began to slip. They got up to accompany a person to the door or maybe to see the bonsai bought the day before. Too caught up in their carefree conversation, they paid no attention to her. Alone, she continued to plunge into her reveries and heard them less and less. The sun has become veiled and has given way to the ambient freshness of the season. She thinks of her life, of what she would have liked, of the other, of her former dreams of somewhere else. She regrets her hesitation. Expected, too expected…
Just after the last tear
Because of grief, injury or perhaps vexation, she cried. Her last tear purifies her soul from all bitterness and dissipates the turmoil. She regains confidence, finds peace, a certain philosophy and the courage to love life. She takes a deep breath and raises her head, radiant, beautiful, serene.
S. Joukhadar 