Dubai: Thousands of years ago, the Persian poet Firdausi wrote the Shahnameh or the ‘Book of Kings', telling heroic tales of ancient Persia. The elaborately illustrated manuscript details the story of Iran through the seventh-century Arab-Islamic conquest of the Sassanid dynasty (which reigned over the second Persian empire).
In his first solo exhibition, London artist Bilal Aquil has created a series of paintings depicting the story of the assassination of a Shah of the Imperial Court, along with the battles that follow to avenge his murder and the subsequent institution of a new Shah in power.
The main aim of Aquil's exhibition is to show the conflict between East and West. He has done this by merging Persian miniatures from the Shahnameh with Francisco de Goya's ‘The Disasters of War', ‘The Second of May 1808' and ‘The Third of May 1808' besides influences from Vincent Van Gogh.
"For me Goya is one of the masters — and for me to replicate a master in that type of style, is one of the greatest things you can do as an artist," Aquil told Gulf News as the exhibition opened last week.
Deep message
His work ‘Charge of the Persians' is a homage to De Goya's ‘The Second of May 1808', but instead of setting it in Madrid as the original is, Aquil has translated the work and set it in Persia, adding aspects of Persian calligraphy.
"I like this kind of dark, deep, message," Aquil said of the painting, "There are kind of riots and there's lots of commotion. I was actually in the first Brixton riots in 1981, I was a kid at the time and it felt very similar. If you look closely at the painting itself, there's lots of drama, people pushing, there's lots of reins, lots of smoke and it's very dark," he said.
Lawyer by profession
Aquil was born and raised in London and has a Kashmiri background. He is a qualified solicitor and a practicing media and telecoms lawyer. He studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, where he "lived and breathed" Persian miniatures.
Aquil's grandfather was a poet and his mother used to read him the Shahnameh when he was a child.
Aquil also wanted to show his inner feelings through his exhibition, the tension between the East and West, the "them versus us" attitude and to demonstrate resurgence in the Middle East. "There is that Western side inside me… there's two guys in me. It's not meant to be a political show, it's far from it," he said.
- Aquil has also exhibited in London's Brick Lane and in Brixton.
- Reign of the Shah is showing in Traffic, Al Quoz, until June 15.
