Athar Jaber’s figure sculptures, primarily produced in stone, focus on degradation, humiliation, violence, fragility, and questions of beauty. Born to Iraqi parents, his sculptures reflect on violence and war and their effects on real bodies. Raised in Florence, the artist questions, by creating deformed figures, the tradition of depicting perfection and beauty in marble statues. Jaber subjects his marble sculptures to carving, sandblasting, acid, and even shooting the faceless stone busts, limbs, and figures. The materiality of the degraded surfaces forces an emotional reaction to an otherwise cold stone body. Stone - Opus 15 is the outcome of the artist’s extensive travels to Jerusalem, Jericho and Bethlehem. Working onsite at the Palestinian Museum, Jaber considers the city of Jerusalem, a city defined by stones whose surfaces are sanctified and violated, as simultaneously worshipped and neglected. He has carved various body parts in negative relief as gaps in the stone – a head, a shoulder, a hand – inviting visitors to touch and become one with the stone.
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