Mona Saudi
The Petra Tablets Adonis 9
1997
Limited Edition of 29/50
Silkscreen Lithographs
49 x 72 cm (Image Size)
90 x 60 cm (Print Size)
Signed and Numbered
Framed
$ 2,000
Occasionally I write poetry, always profoundly connected to sculpture. My poetry is that of someone who works in the formation of stone. Some of the phrases of my poems were initially written on the walls of my studio: 'In stone, we erase an ocean of dreams,' When the stone loses its weight, it becomes poetry, Dawn comes when the stone speaks of the first creation.' One of my poems was born with my first sculpture in green stone. The first sculpture of the series, Woman/Bird, was inspired by a poem by Yannis Ritsos.
'First Vision' and 'An Ocean of Dreams' are two collections of poetry that I published in 1970 and 1993, respectively. For the second, the critic Jabra Ibrahim Jabra wrote in his introduction, 'Her poems are evidence of her vision of art and sculpture. She writes as a sculptor who seeks to make the stone come alive, spreading sensibility and vibration in every part of it. Yet she also writes as a poet who searches for a poetic phrase to express the deep love which itself seeks expression in the sculpting of stone.' Poetry has inspired many of my drawings. For example, 'The Tree of Lovers" by the poet Mahmoud Darwish, in which Man and Earth are united. The words of Adonis reflect my own feelings. He wrote: 'My mother didn't know how to write but she taught me language. The invisible inhabits stone...'
I usually draw with China ink; sometimes I use diluted coffee to recreate the colour of the desert. The forms are always sculptural. It is as if everything I produce is oriented towards sculpture. My passion for poetry stems from its resemblance to sculpture in that the poetic phrase, like a sculpture, opens a space of infinite inspirations and resonance. For me, sculpture is an incarnation of poetry, touching on the invisible. It is the language of silence, of movement in stillness; it is flying without wings. It combines the cosmic with the earthly, merging Time and Space, creating a dialogue with the known and the unknown.
