Christian Fraud, Publisher - Éditions Bow-window

 

Noura Chami-Harmel works in the millenary tradition of the monks illuminators. She chooses and reproduces illustrations in the respect of ancestral techniques (creation of pigments, gold leaf decorations...), to make small jewels which touch us in the depths of the soul. Her great knowledge of the medieval period and her artistic sensitivity have also guided her towards her own creations, such as her sublime cathedral roses, vibrant with deep meaning and subtle colours. Noura, it is also a meeting with an exceptional woman who spends her hours in a luminous workshop, far from the moods of the time, close to the essential. Attached to her task, meticulous, demanding but also radiant, she delivers with grace the message of forgotten centuries. 

 

Bernard Brousse, author

 

I met Noura Chami-Harmel during the preparation of her superb exhibition at the Cathédraloscope in Dol-de-Bretagne. I had to do an interview for a radio station in Saint Malo. As the exhibition progressed, I saw the quality of her work and when she unveiled the blue rose window (inspired by the rose in the cathedral of Saint-Jean in Lyon), I was truly amazed.

 

The art of illumination is a long process of introspection ; one must turn inward and open oneself to the divine way. Noura seems to have succeeded in doing this. Later, I had the opportunity to visit her home and her workshop. She was starting to work on an upcoming exhibition and I was able to appreciate the quality of her work.

 

Noura's studio, without being like the scriptorium of the copyist monks, is like her own: clear, perfectly tidy, with absolute silence and serenity. There is no doubt that Noura finds in these places the ideal conditions to develop her "art craft", she who refuses to use the word "artist", which she is nevertheless, and of high quality, I would even say.

 

And may her talent continue to amaze us!

 

Olivier Delépine, Director of the Cathédraloscope in Dol-de-Bretagne (Ille-et-Vilaine)

 

To speak of illumination is to summon in one's head a few old manuscripts where audacious lettering announces, in order to give them wonder, dense texts, with thick lines, difficult to read and, for the ignorant, often with a remote meaning.

The meeting with Noura Chami-Harmel was thus for me made of two revelations.

For the first, I discovered this traditional know-how where mastery is a matter of patience and meticulousness, humility and knowledge, love of natural colours and precious gold. Thus awakened and enriched, my curiosity was carried away by the authenticity and intrinsic beauty of the work.

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The second was the artist's spirit of research and his modernity. With an extreme exigency and this immutable grammar of matter and colours, Noura invents new figures, new formats, new series, all based on ample ancient narratives. The result is unprecedented because the aesthetic dimension that develops, made up of thousands of precisely placed graphic acts, provokes a strange fascination that instantly binds you to the painting and invites you to wander endlessly into the exhilarating depths of colour and gold.

 

Charlotte de Tonquédec, Head of Culture and Faith at the Priory of Mont-Saint-Michel in Ardevon (Manche) - Fondation du Mont-Saint-Michel

 

I understood what illumination was the day I discovered the works of Noura Chami-Harmel. I will never forget the beauty of her stained glass window in Chartres cathedral.

Beyond an exceptional work of patience, precision and technique, each drawing emanates an incredible depth, the light and colours burst forth, each line has meaning... Each work is a testimony of spirituality.

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Moreover, Noura likes to transmit her knowledge. With generosity and humility, she shows her trainees, from 6 to 99 years old, how to make a beautiful illumination using the same methods and pigments as in the Middle Ages: from egg yolk to gold leaf to lapis lazuli... wonder guaranteed!

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Jacques Pons, Journalist

 

In time, linked... Noura Chami-Harmel could have been only an Art Craftsman, Calligrapher and Illuminator... Exhibitions, workshops, galleries, publications would have come to recognize the extent of her knowledge and her mastery. But one does not look at old grimoires and doctrines with impunity, one does not handle pigments and gold leaves, silver powders, natural elements, mineral extracts without consequences...

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Wasn't it in his destiny, inscribed in his first name, to go further, to light a wider path? Noura means "light" and this Arabic name, like the patronymic Chami, comes from the verb "nawara", which could be translated as "to illuminate".

Semantic wink, coincidence or unstoppable chronology? Perhaps it's all the same: with Noura, it's all about time.

 

Noura paints a portrait of it. Line by line, she draws it. According to her desires, exhibitions and projects, here is the exact recreation of a battle or castle illumination, here is the revisiting of a series of maps of the planets, moods, months and winds, There are immense rosettes whose authentic forms are home to essential symbolism treated in accordance with the rules of medieval art ; there again, modern compositions are imposed, combining motifs from the past ; finally, the artist gives free rein to personal creations, labyrinths, alphabets...

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The Gnawas were looking for nothing else in these repetitive dances and songs. Likewise the whirling dervishes or the Zen gardeners, the Redskins or the festooners pounding the ground... Noura draws lines. Features inhabited by centuries of culture, by eras of admiration, by hours of tenacious, patient work, to the point of self-sacrifice, at the risk of stiff neck muscles, of wearing a neck brace, of immense fatigue of the eyes exhausted by extreme attention and overabundant lights.

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Noura traces features and centuries, anecdotes, details and symbolism that are as immutable as the human condition. Humility and extreme pretentiousness that her gestures as an artist craftsman who perpetuates the 'gesture' of this sacred art, spirituality incarnate. Beyond religions, it is an art of wisdom, and to be savoured, moments of full balance, as outside and in the heart of time.

 

Jean-Michel Baudouin, French-Swiss physicist and entrepreneur

 

Illumination from the Latin illuminare, Noura from the Arabic An Nour...

There is no need to look for the source of this splendid inspiration that revisits cultures, traditions and artistic gestures. 

Your hand is the one that pours water on a garden from which timeless, universal beauty will bloom...

Bravo for this talent!

 

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