The Silent Solider by Naemat Wardak Explore Mondoir Studio Medium: Oil on Canvas Dimensions: 40 x 30 cm Year: 2025 Price: $5890.00 USD Status: available “The Silent Soldier” is an oil painting about witnessing rather than fighting. I created the soldier from sharp geometric planes and restrained color, giving him a stillness that reflects my own experience growing up in Afghanistan. The mountains behind him represent memory and history, while the floating forms suggest fragmented borders, thoughts, and identities. I wanted the painting to hold both the weight of Afghanistan’s past and the dignity of its people without becoming a literal depiction of conflict. The work is part of my broader exploration of memory, identity, and belonging through geometric abstraction. Why collect this work?A severe shift in scale makes the seated soldier dominate the composition without acting. Set apart from the smaller walking figure, he reads as an observer whose authority is complicated by immobility. In his supplied statement, Wardak says that memories of Afghanistan inform his use of fragmented forms. Here, that intention supports a reading of the landscape as personal reconstruction rather than documentary evidence.The supplied photograph shows mountains interrupted by flat blocks, suspended spheres, and abrupt changes in perspective. These visual breaks deny a continuous setting, placing the two figures within different spatial logics.Catalogued as oil on canvas, the painting pairs clean-edged shapes with gradual shading across the head, peaks, and rounded forms. The medium permits schematic construction and recognisable volume to coexist.Dated 2025, the work provides a specific case for considering how conflict may be approached through distance, scale, and fractured geography instead of depicted violence. About the ArtistNaemat Wardak Naemat Wardak is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: painting. Based in Kabul, AF. Nationality: Afghan I paint because there are things I remember that I cannot fully put into words.
