Untitled (last ashes)
1999 - Present
Description
A figure is shown frontally from the shoulders up, the neck elongated and the features angular and stylised. The hair and beard are dark, the eyes almond-shaped with pale highlights, and the skin carries a cool blue-grey cast. The upper body is bare.
The torso opens. Where the chest should be, the picture gives way to a landscape: ruined and broken buildings in silhouette against a sky that runs from deep blue at the top down through orange into gold at the horizon.
Behind the figure, vertical striations of dark grey and charcoal give a textured but placeless ground. The cool tones of the body and the background sit against the warmth held inside the chest.
The device is the body as window, and what it frames is not memory but a place, wrecked and still lit. The ruins are given the same care as the face. Signed lower right.
Preservation Notes
PROVISIONAL. Assessment from visual inspection of a digital image only. No physical examination. Data gaps are expected on this collection and will be completed as information reaches the archive. RELATED TO PLESTIA, AND RELEVANT TO ITS ATTRIBUTION FLAG This work uses the same central device as the record catalogued as Plestia: a figure whose torso opens onto a ruined landscape lit by a low sunset sky. Both are full colour, painterly, and compositionally complex. Both are signed at the LOWER RIGHT. That matters, because the Plestia record carries an open attribution flag. The works filed under this artist divide into two clear groups by signature placement: Lower right: Plestia, this work. Full colour, painterly, body-as-window device. Lower left: Trauma, Noura12, the Heaven series, the Heritage group, Identity. Predominantly monochrome or selective colour, flatter grounds. This is a real and consistent pattern across the collection, not a single observation. It supports two possibilities: either the artist works in two distinct modes and signs each differently, or the two groups are by different hands. It does not settle which. Do not treat this as resolving the Plestia flag. It gives whoever resolves it a much better question to ask: is the lower-right group hers, and if so, what distinguishes it. MATERIAL ASSESSMENT Automated inspection called this oil or acrylic on canvas. Treat as unreliable, as with the rest of this collection. Recorded as unconfirmed. The same reading was returned for Plestia, so if one is confirmed the other likely follows. TITLE SOURCE Taken from the source filename NouraAlqasialastashes.JPG, which appears to contain the words last ashes. This is inferred from the filename, not from any inscription. Needs confirmation. Note also that the Plestia record holds a file named The last ash.JPG. Two works, two similar filenames referring to ash. Whether these are a pair, a sequence, or unrelated should be recorded from the artist. SIGNATURE Present lower right in dark navy cursive. Not transcribed. Automated reading has been unreliable throughout this collection. SOURCE FILE 2190 x 3038 px, aspect ratio only. Physical dimensions unknown.
Tags
More by Noura Alqasasia نُورا القصاصية
Untitled (Heaven 3)Noura Alqasasia نُورا القصاصية
Untitled (Heaven 1)Noura Alqasasia نُورا القصاصية
Heaven Above the Sky of Gaza (title plate)Noura Alqasasia نُورا القصاصية
Untitled (NouraAlqasia)Noura Alqasasia نُورا القصاصية
Untitled (NouraAlqasia1)Noura Alqasasia نُورا القصاصية
Untitled (Heaven 6)Noura Alqasasia نُورا القصاصية