Day and night, for three months, Sumer Al Hindawi carved away at a massive boulder from the Jordanian desert. He worked up to 20 hours a day on the dense halabat stone. What emerged from the boulder was divine. A 7.5 tonne sculpture of the world’s oldest known female deity – Inanna, goddess of love and war.
Sumer Al Hindawi has a long history with the goddess. Born and raised in Iraq, Al Hindawi was named after his ancestors - the Sumerians. They worshipped the goddess 4500 years ago in Mesopotamia, now Iraq.
“The history of Mesopotamia is full of love,” Al Hindawi said. “People from east and west, they follow the media, they think Iraq is like a desert and nothing there. And I'm saying ‘No. There's a love there that's 7,000 years old!’”
Al Hindawi challenges Western perceptions about the formerly war-torn country also with his art. Choosing the goddess Inanna for his recent sculpture is a proclamation of love and transformation.
“This is my message,” said Al Hindawi, ‘we have love, we know how to love.’”
The sculpture is inspired by a famous myth; Inanna’s passion for war hero Gilgamesh. Inanna proposes. Gilgamesh rejects her. Inanna sends the ‘Bull of Heaven’ to smite him. But Al Hindawi has defied 4000 years of convention. He’s re-written the final scenes of this tale and given the feuding lovers a happy ending. The ‘Inanna’ sculpture entwines them in an eternal kiss.
“Art is an international language that anyone can understand or even feel,” Al Hindawi said. “I put a love story behind this international language and go from there.”
Love stories were the domain of the goddess Inanna and her sexual power were honoured millennia ago.
“Inanna actually sings songs of praise to her own vulva,” said Macquarie University historian Dr Louise Pryke. “She really celebrates her feminine sexuality. And Inanna is wonderfully complex. She screams like a bird of prey when she doesn't get her own way.”
“I think the world today needs Inanna,” Dr Pryke said. “Recently, with the #metoo movement, we’ve seen this focus on powerful women. Inanna is the original powerful woman. Sometimes she's fighting for justice. But sometimes she gets jealous or a little bit greedy. It’s great to bring more complexity into how we perceive women and how they are perceived from the time of the world's earliest records.”
In ancient texts Inanna is exalted for being as impressive in the bedroom as she is in on battlefield. In Jordan, a predominantly Islamic country, the powerful female representation is embraced, as long modesty isn’t compromised.
Ancient statuette possibly representing Inanna, also known as Ishtar. Source: Supplied
“Islamic culture have their rules about nudity for public areas. But if artists submit a figurative, contemporary or abstract sculpture it will be welcomed - like our case with ‘Inanna’,” Al Hindawi said.
Al Hindawi studied Middle Eastern arts and culture at Baghdad University. But shortly after graduating in 2000, he was forced to flee the country and culture that inspired his work, in the wake of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
“It started not being safe for artists. There were thousands of people that got killed, for no reason,” Al Hindawi said. “My friend was killed. Someone put a bomb in his studio. But it wasn’t just artists, anyone who held the culture was targeted.”
With his heavily pregnant wife and pre-school daughter, Al Hindawi fled to Jordan in 2003. They had only $1300 to their name.
“You know, at that time I was so calm.” Al Hindawi said. “I trusted myself. I thought, ‘I don't know what to do, but I will do something’.”
His optimism paid off. From Jordan, Al Hindawi’s family were welcomed by Canada as refugees. It was in Canada that his multi-media approach to sculpture attracted attention.
The 42-year-old’s work now features in private collections and state archives across the globe. Outside of Canada, he’s most prolific and famous in the Middle East. The recent Inanna statue was commissioned by the luxury hotel ‘Kempinski Ishtar’ in Jordan. The sculpture overlooks a new events terrace alongside the shimmering Dead Sea.
“It’s a popular place for weddings” said Al Hindawi. A location that would surely please a goddess like Inanna.
The author travelled to Jordan as part of The Foreign Correspondent Study Tour, a University of Technology Sydney (UTS) programme supported by the Council for Australian-Arab Relations (CAAR), which is part of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).
