Sacha Jafri is far removed from the stereotype of the bohemian, tortured and introvert artist. When he presented his latest collections, Universe of the Child and Private Collection — The World Tour, at the DIFC-based Cuadro gallery recently, the artist wowed art aficionados with his vivacity.
Jafri, who has won the accolade Young Artist of the Year 2010, is the youngest to be accorded the honour of retrospectives in prestigious museums such as the Guggenheim, the MoMA, the Royal Academy London, the Paris Museum of Modern Art, the Islamic Museum.
He has participated in projects such as painting the "21 most influential living Muslims".
Jafri said working on commissioned assignments does not interest him because "then people control you".
"I may accept a command once a year but I like to work on my own. Every two years, I build a collection of 22 to 24 paintings and sell the works. Money frees you but I'm not interested in materialism. [I want to] see the world. For me, painting is more a necessity. It's who I am. What I do. It's an attitude."
The artist who can "never do things twice" felt he owed part of his success to the art lovers who have bought his works. "My works were bought by people who appreciate art and display my works next to [those by] Picasso, De Kooning, Toulouse Lautrec, Kandinsky and Gorky, who are my favourite artists."
His works sell for $300,000 to $550,000 and his clients include Madonna, David Beckham, US President Barack Obama, Leonardo DiCaprio and Sharon Stone. For an artist who has raised more than $12 million for charitable causes, Jafri is very humble.
"A lot of artists have a job. But painting is all I have done. Sometimes [being in the limelight] can burn you out at a young age. It's been a long journey for me. It took me about nine years to get noticed," he said.
Canvas for a cause
He has worked with schools, refugee camps and charities for the past 14 years. The Universe of the Child collection was born out of his collaboration with START and Tashkeel, which organise art workshops for children with special needs. "I wanted to open their [the children's] minds, develop their imagination and get them excited about painting. I told them that they were born with a gift. When you become an adult, you lose that gift. Children have a pure imagination. Unfortunately this purity doesn't last long," Jafri said.
The project was not only an attempt to raise money for the children with special needs and children affected by war but also an initiative in which they could redefine their identity.
"There's an identity crisis in the Middle East. Adults have agendas. ... A child doesn't understand these agendas. I needed a pure vision to represent each country's spirit. It was important to see how they feel they could fit in their country and connect with the past, present and future in a place as fascinating as the Middle East.
"In Darfur, their parents got killed. Their brothers were abducted and were drugged to come back to kill their own. The children painted bomb blasts, piles of dead bodies. It's all they know, it's their life and they're scared. You can't imagine what those children go through. But they have so much strength, it humbles us," Jafri said.
When the artist talks about his work, he seems as if he were a child who has just returned from school with a good grade. "I'll define my work as magic realism. I don't want to be worried about concepts and perfection. You just go on a journey. It's uplifting."
Writers such as Paulo Coelho, Gabriel Garcia Lorca, Kafka, Salman Rushdie and Mistry and film directors such as Sam Mendes, Tim Burton and Stanley Kubrick inspire Sacha "because they reinvent the ordinary".
"I make the mundane become magic. People think there are ten emotions. There are billions. Emotions grow and turn into a tapestry. All my paintings are like dream worlds and fairytales you can travel into."
Some of Jafri's works take up to eight months to finish. When his inspiration dries up, he leaves his artworks aside. He looks at them for four to five hours, gets engaged in a spiritual conversation and reaches a state of trance.
"I can paint 18 to 19 hours with no break... because you're in a trance. In the end you put your soul on a canvas. It's so exhausting," he said.
Music accompanies him in the making of his art. "I listen to the same music over and over again because I don't want my brain to engage [itself] with it. Music should not interfere with the process of creating. I like Chopin, Debussy, Johnny Cash, Cat Sevens, Ben Harper, Lennon Cohen.
"Sometimes I like to listen to jazz and then my work becomes very energetic. When I am in that mood I put on some jazz. My art is very much like jazz. In jazz there's a very fine line between sound that is a little bit of mess and something beautiful. True jazz musicians never play the same thing twice because they play from the soul — like artists, who never paint the same thing twice."
Completed by the viewer
Jafri believes if a painting gets easy to understand, "it gets boring two weeks later". Unlike other artists, he never completes his artworks.
"I don't know when it's finished. It's like a journey. The viewers complete it. You should spend some time with them, talking to them and that's when the magic happens," the artist said.
Usually he works six months and spends the other half of the year travelling. "I need to nourish my brain. I travel all over the world, meet people, try to understand cultures, read a lot, take pictures ... to feed the subconscious."
Samira Mesbahi is a freelance journalist.
