Published 22 January 2021 in Interviews
Contemporary Art Collectors
'Saad Nazih featured as an Emerging Artist by Contemporary Art Collectors'
Published 22 January 2021
Laureate of the fine art school of Casablanca, Morocco. Saad Nazih is visual artist working on several social aspects. Creating a fantasy world that’s treating sensitive subjects as politics, religion and sexuality.
Saad Nazih painting is a way of inciting people to wonder and ask questions about the preinstored values and ethics in nowadays society, and to sensibilize about the human conditions and especially in his community.
Could you tell us a little more about your background, and how did you begin creating art?
I am a visual artist from Morocco, graduated from the Fine Arts School of Casablanca in 2011, but before that, my art journey started much earlier. I’ve embraced art and creativity since my first steps in life. As a child, I remember that I was always waiting for the weekend to be able to spend hours drawing and painting. I was creating face masks and costumes for my friends in the neighborhood, and I was drawing a lot of small portraits on papers and I was sticking them all around the wall of my little room. Growing up in this entourage, my desire and my passion for art drove me straight to the school of fine arts, where I have been studying for four years, and that was my gateway to the professional career.
What does your art aim to say to the viewers?
I essentially make paintings that incite the viewers into a dialogue of wonder about the values and ethics that effects the human conditions in my society, by treating sensitive subjects as politics, religion and sexuality. I presume that my work is an act of rebellion in a society where there is a lot of taboos. I aim to say that we need to have more freedom, and especially freedom of speech and freedom of thoughts…
Can you tell us about the process of creating your work? What is your daily routine when working?
The process of my work is a progression of many steps that grow until getting to the final result. Everything starts with a little idea hovering my head for days until I get completely sure of bring it alive. I begging the practical work by putting the initial sketches on my sketchbook that I keep constantly with me as I always need to write down the ideas before they get lost between hundreds that flows in my head permanently. After getting a satisfying drawing, I move to the documentation phase, which consist on image search, photo shooting and editing the images that will compose the paintings, it’s a preproduction step if we can call it so. And finally when all is done, the show begins on the canvas, where layers and layers of drawing and painting succeed until getting to the final result.
What’s the essential element in your art?
I think that the originality and the strength of my work is being able to treat in one single work many sensitive subjects without any self-censorship, which is something rare and daring in my society. Sexuality and religion are two common themes of my painting but the representation has nothing to do with vulgarity or contempt, that what makes the public more interested about exploring and understanding the message behind it, especially that the esthetical side of the work is significantly elaborated. So I can describe my painting as a dreamy world with some surrealistic tendency and a Sci-fi touch, all made with a realistic rendering.
In your opinion, what role does the artist have in society?
Personally, I think that the artist has immense roles in the society, I can’t imagine a world without him on board. It’s such a beautiful thing to see that every artist has his own definition of art and has his own way to contribute in the community. Whether he is an artist chasing beauty or a committed artist, both make our world better. However, to be more specific, I guess that the most obvious roles of the artist are to share their emotions in a visual manner; to reveal and to reminds the people the truth either if it’s hidden or not; to be witness and to produce a kind of record of their surroundings and last but not least is to make people see the world differently from different perspectives. All those facts make from the artists a very important element in the evolution of a society.
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