The Western War Booty
« French language is a war booty !” , said Katib Yacin, the Algerian writer, to his patriotic algerian friends who blamed him for writing in French,considered as the language of colonizers..This brilliant idea of sharing the war bouty between the winners and the losers of the colonial war perverts the whole cultural configuration of the world built by european colonialist and imperialist undertakers from R. Kipling to S. Huntington.To extend Yacin’s idea , I would say : the whole european cultural tradition is a war booty in which I situate myself as a legitimate heir to all the human cultural fortune that the european tradition could encompass, including non european traditions.Being the heir of the european cultural tradition is also a big risk because from time to time you discover a skeleton in the cupboard!So you have to be critically attentive to the nature of your inheritance because you can not choose among what anonymous people might have bequeathed to their anonymous heirs !the moment for a choice arrives afterwards.I think this is what I am trying to do through my way of being in the world.I am trying to choose life against death and it is not that easy . I think life and death are equally incorporated in the objects of our inheritance.In this connection I see my paintings as an attempt to work out a human personal choice.We get caught every day in the deluge of propaganda images invading our vital environment.I just can’t close my eyes( even if I do I will keep seeing images!), so , I keep my eyes open to each and every kind of images with the intention to render them back to the world, image for image and eye for eye.
Hassan Musa Mars 11, 2005
