Noor Al Suwaidi, Divine Chaos III, 2024. Pastel on paper, 24 x 18 in.
A group of anamorphic shapes in various colors twist and turn as if partners in a passionate dance. Reds greet yellows, purples move into pinks, while a strong hue of orange makes a bold statement. The colors and shapes dance and mingle before our eyes like friends, family, lovers and new acquaintances with an unexplained energetic connection.
Emirati artist Noor Al Suwaidi’s latest body of paintings reflect the notion of divine chaos—the idea that even amid the unknown, often chaotic recesses of our daily lives, there is harmony and guidance. “What is divine chaos?” the artist asks. “It is the unordered state of matter in classical accounts of cosmogony. The works are conceived in the act of creative flow.”
The abstract shapes and colors in Al Suwaidi’s recent paintings often meet each other and at other times depart from each other. They move serendipitously, intuitively, trusting the rhythm, gestures and energetic flow of their movements and feelings that innately pull them towards each other and then away to another area of the canvas where they return to one another in different shapes and colors.
The artist’s latest body of work explores the realm where the material and immaterial meet, the space between reality and dreams and touch and desire. Through her evocative, dreamy abstract paintings Al Suwaidi summons up the energy that permeates our lives and the power of emotion to guide us through life. The paintings capture the temporary, fleeting shapes of dancers in movement—a metaphor for the transient yet so poignant state of life and how the chaos—that which leaves our grasp of control in our personal and collective lives— is yet possibly a mystical unknown form of guidance, if we let it be so.
For Al Suwaidi, it is about accepting with grace the chaos and everything that comes from it. “There are no mistakes,” she says. “Even the unfinished is whole; even a mistake becomes art.” As she lets go and trusts the brush and her intuition to guide her, the forms and colors come naturally, effortlessly to make the gracious abstracted forms defined by a rich palette of joyful hues.
Divine Chaos is about surrender, a releasing of control to be free. It is about tapping into another world, an invisible, divine and special world that is always around us. Chaos, demonstrates Al Suwaidi through her art, is not disorder, it can offer harmony and beauty in a mystical and otherworldly way.
- Rebecca Anne Proctor.
Dubai, September 2024
Noor Al Suwaidi (b. 1981, Abu Dhabi, UAE) is an artist and curator with a career spanning over two decades. Known for the abstract, figurative shapes that make up her artworks and a masterful use of colour, Al Suwaidi has exhibited her work all over the world, including in London, Berlin, Istanbul, Kuwait, Washington, D.C., and throughout the United Arab Emirates. From 2018 to 2022, Al Suwaidi worked at Abu Dhabi’s contemporary art fair, Abu Dhabi Art, heading the VIP relations team while simultaneously continuing her art practice.
Her works are held in numerous public and private collections, including Barjeel Art Foundation (Sharjah), Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation, and the private collection of His Highness Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Bin Zayed Al Nayhan. Al Suwaidi earned her Master’s degree in curating contemporary design from Kingston University in London, and before that, she received her Bachelor’s degree in Studio Art from American University in Washington, D.C.