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Heaven Lies Beneath The Feet of Your Mother Drawing

Habib Hajallie

United Kingdom

Drawing, Ballpoint Pen on Paper

Size: 33.1 W x 23.2 H x 0 D in

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About The Artwork

‘Heaven lies beneath the feet of your mother’ is an Islamic saying by the prophet Muhammad, this hadith is prominent in Muslim culture - emphasising that a child must respect their mother to gain passage into heaven. Though I personally am agnostic, I still appreciate many of the moral teachings of my familial Islamic upbringing. This work (from left to right) depicts my grandmother, mother, my sister and my niece. With all the difficulties of the pandemic since early 2020 in the UK, I wanted to portray a scene of joy and celebration. The summer of 2020, was a time that many of the older population that had been shielding could once again see family whilst being socially distanced. I take immense joy in paying homage to four generations of females in my family being together at the same space and time. It is special; more so that hitherto the pandemic my great grandmother was still alive and this meant that five generations were on this planet concurrently. With my sister, an NHS doctor, having to sacrifice so much time and energy being away from her family to literally save lives, made moments of togetherness in any manifestation so much more significant. The coloured background motif includes colours of the Pan African flag, Lebanese and Sierra Leonean flags, emulating the vibrant textile designs that are prominent in Sierra Leonean fashion. This work, ‘Heaven Lies Beneath The Feet of Your Mother’, is a sentimental portrait conveying my gratitude and finding a positive perspective in the midst of a tumultuous period in all of our lives.

Details & Dimensions

Drawing:Ballpoint Pen on Paper

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:33.1 W x 23.2 H x 0 D in

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My practice looks to empower often marginalised minorities through the exploration of identity within portraiture. Confronting socio-political issues within my drawings can act as a catalyst for a discourse regarding the perception of various demographics as being of lesser humanistic value. Specifically, with the disenfranchised often being undermined by mainstream media; somewhat paradoxically reflecting an archaic hierarchy of status, similar to colonial ideologies. Using antique texts and maps as the canvases for my works enables me to pragmatically re-contextualise ephemera, creating a cohesion between the concepts informing the work and the aesthetic output. As I empower various figures; I simultaneously do so with the ground used, presenting them within new contexts. Placing myself or family members as the subjects of my portraits evokes a sense of immediacy, apropos to navigating the intersection of my western upbringing and familial west African culture. Informed by my Sierra Leonean and Lebanese heritage, I am conscious of representing figures that have historically been conspicuously omitted from traditional British portraiture. I call upon anecdotal references to portray scenes that are occasionally quasi surrealist representations; confronting lingering ethnocentrisms that are still embedded within modern western society. I employ delicate mark making techniques with precise strokes of the everyday ballpoint pen. This process is influenced by sketches from the high renaissance. I meticulously build layers of tonality leading to an element of photorealism. Through an almost contradictory process of using this relatively modern art medium with a classical approach to mark making: I look to celebrate authentic drawing within the digital age. At the core of my practice, I depict motifs that contradict largely accepted revisionist narratives apropos to West African Histories. The portraits investigate how identity can be constructed by historical oppression, with semblances of antiquated ideologies at the root of nuanced prejudices that I have personally experienced. Ultimately, my work looks to embolden individuals that feel as though they have been labelled as the ‘other’ in any manifestation. In March 2022 I was elected as a member of The Royal Society of British Artists.

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