''Origins' is many things: an introduction to Lebanon's complex history, the end of Ottoman Empire through Arab eyes, and an intimate account of diasporic identity. The result is an exquisite memoir, a book that finds drama in the most personal of tales, pathos in the grandest of gestures, and an understanding that the most nomadic of families can also epitomize home. Starting in the mountains of Lebanon and taking him across the sea to Havana, his history is one of restlessness and exile: of the search for identity, of dramatic emigrations, and of revolutions espoused in the dying years of the Ottoman Empire and beyond. With the light and shadows formed the world is hidden between illusion and reality.'We are, and always will be, wanderers who have lost their way.' When a trunk of family letters gives Amin Maalouf the opportunity to trace his past, he finds himself - having never before asked questions - transfixed by the stories of his ancestors. By placing the shapes into space, overlaying them, and choosing perspective and the colour of the sheet, the three-dimensionality is steadily enhanced by overlapping. The starting point of the sculpture of the trees is a drawing, a completely flat surface of geometric shapes.

At the same time, space is formed as its envelope or component of the composition. Sculptural work, however, is created by shaping the volume that we experience both visually and tangibly. The meditation that is looking for inner peace where creativity is born.Ī painter with different spatial keys creates the perception of the object and space in two dimensions. Like us, they have origins-illusory origins, since roads don’t have real starting points.« from the book Origins by Amin Maalouf Roads, unlike trees, do not sprout from the ground wherever the seeds happen to fall. Roads convey us from poverty to wealth or back to poverty, from bondage to freedom or to a violent death. The sap of our native soil does not flow upwards from our feet to our heads we use our feed only to walk. When we sink into the ground, we decompose. Trees are forced into resignation they need their roots. Roots burrow into the ground, twist in the mud, and thrive in darkness they hold trees in captivity from their inception and nourish them at the price of blackmail: ”Free yourself and you’ll die!”

I don’t like the word, and I like even less the image it conveys. »Someone other than I might have used the word “roots”.

Amin maalouf origins