Kashkul al-Rassam
The Illustrator's Notebook is al-Labbad's manifesto: a beautiful tribute to remembrance and the small things of life, it is a delicate yet vivid account of the power and importance of visual memory in connecting us through spatial and temporal bridges, and in making us-- we moderns-- who we are. Al-Labbad succeeds in showing how visual memory brings together layers of meaning (personal, social and historical) and strata of cultures and civilizations. Looking at a photo rescued from a trip calls forth the smell of wet wood mixing with that of almond blossoms; examining a banknote reveals references to bygone civilizations and leads to wondering whether we ever succeed in really seeing the value inhering in what surrounds us:
يبدو أننا لا نرى الكثير مما حولنا في الدنيا لأننا لا نتأملها. فعلى سبيل المثال: هل تأمّل أحدنا تلك المناظر الجميلة المرسومة في باطن كفّه ؟.
Kashkoul al-Rassam is al-Labbad's homage to modernity: his stylized, often humorous renderings of small moments and small things, apparently insignificant in themselves, call on us to lift up, preserve and pass along through visual memory and through writing the beautiful and ephemeral that we tend to pass by without noticing and that fade quickly in our fast-paced and ever-changing lives.