When Himat Ali went from Baghdad to Japan for a short trip in 1990, war broke out in Iraq and he was unable to return. From Japan, he moved to Jordan, before settling in Paris. Ali’s multi-layered abstractions blend organic and geometric forms. His work is often inspired by poetry or made in collaboration with poets, including Adonis and Gutaro Tunezumi. In Iraq, his teacher and guidance had been Shaker Hassan Al Said.

To Ali, dots and signs inscribe a language turned towards infinity. “Writing is only a set of a dot. Hallaj already talked about this a thousand yeas ago”.