Conceptual Art between Symbolism and the Cosmic Vision: A Critical Philosophical Analysis of the Works of Visual Artist Ghassan Ghaib
Researcher and Critic: Dunya Sahib – Iraq
(Part One)
The exhibition "Our Planet Today: Think Green" by visual artist Ghassan Ghaib is a contemporary conceptual art experience held in October 2022 at Orfali Gallery in Amman, Jordan. The exhibition presents a humanitarian, artistic protest against global environmental degradation, using both natural and industrial materials to highlight the negative impact of human activity on the environment.
Exhibition Content:
The exhibition featured diverse installation works, including:
Artistic assemblages of tree leaves and trunks, with the floor covered in natural elements to offer a direct sensory-intellectual experience with nature.
Use of industrial waste materials, such as windshield wipers, leaving imprints on the artworks to symbolize industrial pollution.
Artworks depicting environmental destruction, like a red circle made from dead butterfly cocoons symbolizing the loss of biodiversity.
Symbolic elements such as guns, indicating human violence and its devastating effects on the environment.
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Militarizing the Environment through War and Nature's Cry
Environmental disasters are escalating, emphasizing the urgent need to confront the horrifying realities imposed on nature by human activity. Through his artworks, Ghassan Ghaib expresses deep concern over the escalating threats facing our planet, such as global warming and the impacts of climate change.
In his homeland Iraq, these threats manifest tragically. Repeated human-made wars have militarized the environment and destroyed its vital components. One catastrophic example is the burning of oil wells in Kuwait, which resulted in thick, polluted black rain clouds that tainted vast areas of land.
Destructive policies have also led to the dredging of rivers, deforestation, soil contamination with depleted uranium, the drying of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the endangerment of animal species, and the burning of palm groves—testimonies to the devastation inflicted upon life and nature.
Despite the physical limits of the human body, excessive ambition and arrogance have driven mankind to persist in destroying nature, turning it from a nurturing environment into a polluted space that reflects a scene of moral, human, and civilizational collapse.
What we are witnessing is not merely a set of environmental crises but an existential alarm urging us to pause, reflect, and realize the necessity of restoring balance between humanity and nature—before we become strangers on an earth that can no longer tolerate our arrogance and abuse of its purity and clarity.
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The Impact of Environmental Pollution on Living Creatures and the Balance of Shared Life
Environmental pollution is among the gravest challenges facing our planet today. It directly affects the health of humans, animals, and plants and threatens the balance of ecosystems that sustain life. Pollution affects air, water, and soil, resulting in diseases and various health risks for all living beings.
Animals suffer poisoning and illness due to environmental pollutants and lose their natural habitats due to environmental degradation, disrupting food chains and affecting biodiversity. Plants also suffer from soil and air pollution, limiting their growth and impacting animals dependent on them for food.
The Earth, created by God, is a shared world inhabited by living beings in a delicate balance. Any disturbance to this balance threatens the natural and cosmic system as a whole. Humans are responsible for maintaining this balance and play a central role in protecting the environment by reducing pollution, using clean energy sources, and raising awareness about environmental preservation.
Preserving the environment is a human and moral duty that ensures the sustainability of life for all creatures on this blessed Earth.
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The Butterfly as a Philosophical Symbol – Fragility and Transformation in the Tragedy of Nature
The artistic and intellectual experience of Ghassan Ghaib is a contemporary model of art engaged with issues of environment, existence, and industrial-technological transformation. Ghaib uses the symbol of the butterfly not merely as an aesthetic or biological element but as a deep philosophical metaphor representing fragility, transformation, and the harmful biological rebirth caused by industrial and technological pollution.
This symbolism reflects the tragic environmental and human condition amid climate change, geopolitical conflicts, and cultural, environmental, and civilizational destruction—especially in Iraq and the Arab world.
The exhibition begins from a multi-media installation perspective, where the artist employs organic and industrial materials such as tree trunks, leaves, asphalt, paper, acrylic, and industrial waste to reshape the concept of “nature” within a multifaceted critical artistic discourse. It simultaneously:
Renews awareness of humanity’s connection to the Creator and the cosmos,
Raises questions about the essence of Earth, the meaning of life’s continuity and extinction,
And denounces patterns of exploitation and destruction resulting from industrial modernity, warfare, and pandemics afflicting global populations.
Among the works reflecting this concept is "The Aging of the Butterfly", where the butterfly—through its environmental symbolism—becomes a shattered map of destroyed cities and troubled societies, afflicted by war, corruption, pollution, toxic waste, and the radiation produced by industry and technology.
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Art as an Existential Discourse
"Our Planet Today – Think Green" emerges from a deep philosophical vision wherein Ghassan Ghaib redefines conceptual art as an existential discourse. It transcends mere visual deconstruction and embodies the ontology of environmental fragility and its continuous transformations—culminating in disappearance and extinction.
The materials used in his artworks are not just tools; they are metaphorical signifiers of the mortal nature of living beings, particularly humans—fragile creatures subject to extinction, powerless before nature’s forces and cosmic transformations.
In this light, Ghaib’s works reveal the boundaries of survival and extinction as relative, impermanent concepts governed by nature and the universe's transformations.
He frames his existential questions within a visual scene that evokes Heidegger’s concept of Aletheia (unconcealment), wherein remnants of nature—such as burnt leaves and charred wood—become cosmic traces carrying a fateful question:
What does it mean to exist in a dying world?
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Environmental Art and Ecological Consciousness – From the Anthropocene to Emotional Impact
"Our Planet Today – Think Green" belongs to the movement of ecological art, which engages with environmental issues, biological sciences, and climate politics, presenting a critical discourse with a universal and humanitarian message.
In this context, the artwork becomes a contemplative space calling for the recovery of original innocence and the awareness that pollution is a profoundly dangerous threat to Earth’s environment. This pollution extends beyond the physical realm to the nature of humanity itself, distorting the clarity of thought, staining the purity of the soul, and destroying the body.
Hence arises the call to protect the Earth as a sacred trust, with its preservation being a moral and human responsibility. It calls upon man to reflect and humble himself before the Creator—the Maker of this universe and the wondrous beauty of His creation.
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. Melancholic Beauty – Resistance through Art
Ghassan Ghaib adopts the concept of Melancholic Beauty, which is not based on superficial charm or false joy, but emerges from sorrow, decay, and fragmentation. This fragile beauty arises from cracks, collapses, and ashes, forming a philosophical resistance against a culture of consumerism and falsity in an age of speed and perishable materialism.
Here, neither butterflies nor scattered leaves serve to visually entice through superficial form—they awaken the soul and compel the viewer to contemplate their responsibility toward the Earth, the environment, and the shared destiny.
The artwork becomes a means of education and of cultivating sensory and emotional taste. It reshapes the sense of beauty and calls for a deeper contemplation of the suffering caused by environmental pollution and its negative impact on existence. This is the truth.
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Visual Language – A Cosmic Code
Ghassan Ghaib reconstructs his visual language as a cosmic code, in which material elements—like the butterfly, wing, asphalt, ash, wires, tires, matchsticks, and tree trunks—become symbols and signifiers that transcend their materiality. They open the door to interpretations rooted in collective memory, mythology, environmental facts, Sufi experiences, and natural sciences.
Thus, the painting or artistic installation becomes an open text, rich in layered concepts, inviting critics to interpret it from philosophical, environmental, spiritual...
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