Sharifah Zuriah Aljeffri

Sharifah Zuriah Aljeffri: A silent language of heart and soul
by Chu Li

In the beginning in the ending
Is to die to be born anew
To journey on the back of time to eternity
Is to fear and to hope once more
Once more to receive this silent
Secret communication with the stars
And to beat to the hum of the cosmos
A silent language of heart and soul
Like the birds the season and nature
Talk to one another in the same tongue
The artist captures this echo of silence
For she, too, converses in such manner
In this silent calligraphy of the stars
A dialogue with the revolving spheres
The universe
From heart to heart
An inspiration to the soul
Which lights up
Whenever we look up to the sun of the sky
For a warm touch or a joyful sign

In the beginning a word, and she takes refuge in word to decipher solace when all around her is in chaos. She bleeds too, for their pain, for their aborted living into death. Bosnia-Herzegovina. The historic recycling of powern torn asunder and sheer human madness The end of time? So she turns to the Qur'an to realign her bearings and to put her trust in that divine direction. To listen to the temper of time so she, too, may sing the cries of human suffering.

From the two letters Ha and Mim, the beginning, the ending, taken from Surahs 40-46 in the Qur'an, Sharifah Zuriah calligraphs the confusion and frenzy of the present time, the last decade of the twentieth century. To exorcise, to synthesize her pain with their pain. To feel to share, to express in her paintings that which cannot be uttered by a people in passing.

The impulse of her recent paintings come from the very heart of Nature. The same force that guides the salmon upstream to spawn and then die in the out-going tide; that drives the migration of birds and fish from season to season. The same sap that pulls a blade of grass, wax and wane to the moon, the eclipse of the sun, the rising and setting of the constellation. All the same force of Nature that turns the season, turns the series of paintings of a sensitive artist.

Sharifah Zuriah surrenders to the silent language with Nature in communication with the universe, the eternal cycles of space-time. She firmly belives this silent bond with the stars is in all of us. We are born with this gift. She breaks with her former style of painting and listens to the stirring of her own heart and soul, the mirror image of that Greater Soul, the source of all languages.

To forge a bond with this violent time, the Ha Min Series of paintings