Ahmad Reza doesn’t want to sell his paintings.
At least, not right now.
The Coquitlam artist has crafted his oils to create images of children in poverty-stricken, wartorn countries.
They are, after all, symbols of hope and the future.
Reza doesn’t want to part with the stories they tell.
That’s because he knows their tales only too well.
A native of Kabul, Afghanistan, Reza and his family fled from the Taliban grip in the late 1990s. In Pakistan, while attending an English-language school, he met Soria Paiman, who would later become his saviour.
But in 2002 — a year before she and her family immigrated to Canada — Reza, his two younger siblings and parents returned to their homeland after the fighting subsided.
Tensions were always high.
Reza found his way out after he graduated in computer science at Kardan Institute of Higher Education in 2011.
It was while he was on a work visa in the U.S. — employed by a telecommunications company — that he asked Paiman for her hand.
He never looked back.
Now a permanent resident of Canada, Reza said he’s picking up the pieces of his life.
Currently, he’s looking for employment but mostly he spends his days painting and volunteering at the Port Moody Arts Centre and other facilities.
Last month, his work caught the eye of PMAC visual arts manager Janice Cotter who included two of Reza’s pieces — Freedom and Peace — in her Art 4 Life exhibit; his artwork was showcased at the city council meeting on Oct. 11.
Freedom, he said, shows a joyful child on a handmade portable swing in the middle of a Kabul graveyard. Behind him is Kabul’s biggest Shiite mosque where, earlier this month, a bomb killed 16 worshippers celebrating Ashoura.
In Peace, Reza interprets an image of happy kids, holding a kite and laughing inside cramped Kabul home. They are disheveled and poor. “They have no quality of life,” he said.
The theme continues in his other pieces. Reza has an African boy, standing in a desert, wearing two different types of useless shoes. There is another portrait of a Kandahar girl, also desperate, holding a pomegranate — a fruit grown in her city that represents fertility. Her eyes are sad but fierce.
In the corner of Reza’s living room stands a large canvas. He has sketched out the now-famous photo of a shell-shocked boy in the Syrian city of Aleppo. Behind him lies the humanitarian catastrophe and the ruins of Palmyra.
These paintings make Reza emotional and his wife wipes away tears when they speak about Kabul — “a place rich in beauty and tradition that has been ruined by three decades of war and corrupt governments,” he said.
“As an artist, I feel responsible. I feel I need to speak out for these children,” the 31 year old said. “I am inspired by them and I am very bothered by what’s going on around them. They don’t deserve that kind of life. They are the most vunerable in our society.”
Reza, who learned how to sketch and paint from established artists in Kabul and has picked up techniques via YouTube, has a distinct touch and palette to his work.
Yet, he insists he’s not a political artist. Rather, he wants to convey a message of hope through his young subjects.
When he sells, he vowed, he wants to see his paintings hung in a public venue — not in a collector’s home.
He stares at his collection and pauses before stating this: “I want them to be seen by as many people as possible every day. I want them to remember how good Canada is.”
• Art 4 Life closes Nov. 1 at the Port Moody Arts Centre (2425 St. Johns St.). From Nov. 14 to 26, Ahmad Reza will open a new exhibit at the Roundhouse Community Centre in Vancouver called The Open Door: Inventory of Form. The group show, co-curated with Mishaal Rinch, is by Ismaili visual artists and is in partnership with the Ismaili Muslim Council. The opening reception is Nov. 19.
