To paint with Fear and Trembling - Lahd Gallery explores dark phenomena

Artists turn themselves inside out; fear and trembling are external hints of what is really going on beneath the skin. Yet for many creatives, their pain is visible, visceral and filled with discomforting dark phenomena they expose for our scrutiny.

It is as if artists sacrifice any semblance of normality and refuse to be placated in their search for what some might see as a horrifying truth. This is a truth that can be unpalatable, edgy and threatens to unleash all that has historically been so powerfully subjugated.  The installations of Grzegorz Klaman are an example of this edginess which forces the viewer to ask unpalatable questions about the world. His intense exhibition ‘Fear and Trembling was staged at the Haif Museum of Art in 2009.

In fact, artists from the Middle East often articulate the experience of collision between cultures and experiences. It is as if some are being pressed into the gaps between east and west. These are inexorably shifting towards one another and creating overbearing pressure.

This year Lahd Gallery has exhibited, amongst others, Suhair Sibai, Wadia Boutaba, and Asli Erel. These three artists are aware of these pressures. Their work expresses fissures, fault lines but also a glimpse into the molten heart of the female experience.

Their work is about struggle, about conflicting influences of disruption and complex identities. They challenge beliefs and explore notions of fear and oppression through certain iconoclastic beliefs.

SuhairSibai’s art has at its centre a locus of displacement, division. It faces the dark phenomena lurking within each one of us. We live with it but often mask internal passion, emotion and fear beneath societal expectation, tradition and ritual. These structures attempt to maintain surface calm and acceptance of an approximation less challenging than what lies beneath.

These artists occupy an uncomfortable spot at the juncture of culture. This is a complex vantage point. Politically there is the residue of essentialism, otherness and absence to deal with as Wadia Boutaba’s work demonstrates. However, this focus on the domestic occurs alongside the impact of a new global political order and the highly politicised gender debate which questions the very notion of female ‘self’.

Realism is the new mimesis but still a representation with its own political agenda and subjectivity. These artists are not content to passively picture the contemporary world.

A realism, a brutal line of enquiry which interrogates the  ‘Why and the who says? Which challenges what mandate governments possess and for how much longer?’ Sibai’s work, for example offers up representations of strong women whose expressions are still somehow veiled by the invisible yet tangible continued misogyny evident across the globe.

Elsewhere, others, such as the Columbian artist Doris Salcedo’s installation Shibboleth in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall  (2007-2008) investigate the dark phenomena at work in the world. Her installation was composed of a crack that ran the length of the imposing Tate Modern space. The sides of this crack were encased in a steel mesh fence.  The definition of shibboleth is maybe a custom, a way of speaking a phrase, or even a style of dress that enables specific groups or classes to be racially or socially excluded. You look into the crack and see the darkness within.

Mona Hatoum also offered an even more startling insight back in 1989  with her installation ‘Light At The End' A stunning, provocative and visceral play on the juxtaposition of light and darkness, of supposed salvation and notions of torture.

There is an intense desire to come to terms with the realism of this dramatic new world order, the abuses, censorship and repressive nature which still prevail. ‘Art is praxis…an engaged stance in the historical present.’

Asli Erel understands that even making marks are loaded with symbolic meaning. We may feel it’s easy to put a mark on a page but each letter is a story in itself and the artist is acutely aware of this fact.

Our artists make art in uncomfortable times. 

We all struggle with concealment and revelation, truth and artifice, the experienced and the imagined. The great battles between good and evil, darkness and light, ignorance and wisdom, prejudice and tolerance, suppression and liberation, are acknowledged; Halloween being one such time; the Day of the Dead being another example.

Some contemporary artists paint with fear and trembling always, in an attempt to explore this darkness and bring it into the light.

Artist of The Month - Wadia Boutaba: dichotomies and interstice

The painter Jenny Saville stated in a recent interview that she found that as a woman, being a creator of life and a creator of paintings an extraordinary privilege. It is a fact that informs her latest work on every level. As a significant voice in contemporary art work she has demonstrated how women no longer exist within a painting but are also creators of artworks.

Wadia Boutaba is a young artist who also sheds light on women’s lives and what it means to be female. Feminism is a key theme and often informs the critical reception her work receives.

In fact Boutaba occupies interstices and is very much inspired by the duality of her Moroccan and British heritage. She was born in the UK to Moroccan parents, who originated from Nador, north of Morocco. Boutaba’s paintings depict these tangible Moroccan roots and the diversity of this ancient culture. Its influence is highly significant. Boutaba calls herself the “Moroccan Artist” and her use of colour and the vivid depiction of Morocco’s unique society is redolent throughout her paintings. Yet there is a knowing which emanates from her British experience and education.

Boutaba often represents her Moroccan identity through a type of cultural dialogue. Within this exchange she poses many questions while constantly wrestling the challenges of having two identities. Her oeuvre reflects the dichotomy thrown up by such collisions of experience. The fissures are evident everywhere.

However she does believe art can provide a bridge between people and cultures.  After all, Boutaba says: ‘The struggle of being influenced by two very different societies and cultures is not something you can really be taught to handle. Finding a balance is always difficult.’ Therefore her work both concurrently celebrates and challenges the notion of what was once seen as ‘women’s experience’.

Patriarchal lineage is disrupted as Boutaba overtly questions accepted norms. Her work explores these female experiences as a residue of cultural influence. The exotic and the everyday are carefully balanced in works such as Untitled  1205 So is the conundrum of being mother, home maker, career woman and challenger of accepted cultural iconoclastic beliefs.  These complex identities can lead to a fusion of fragility and strength. This dichotomy is often presented in Boutaba’s work Untitled 1208

Having studied at art school her initial passion was textile design and her degree followed this subject. Textiles in themselves have been used by artists such as Emin and Schapiro to subvert the dominant patriarchal hegemony. Yet Boutaba returned to fine art in her late twenties. 

She once said she saw the practice of art as a way of expressing not just a personal perspective but as recording what can be observed of the everyday. Consequently women in Moroccan culture often form the basis for her work. Her narrative arch was constructed through listening to female conversations. She has been fascinated by how roots and fibres are stretched and sometimes broken by the fragmentation of communities across different continents. 

Boutaba makes little effort to hide her political interests or cultural perspective. Her paintings avoid the artifice of supposed neutrality as if to say her knowledge and experience is socially situated – please take note.

Similarities between North Africa and the Middle East also inspire her. So does societal shifts which have seen women gaining equality. Her use of colour underscores the profound change and celebration of the new. Sometimes Boutaba says her work is inspired mainly by feeling, and responses to what is actually happening within the immediate domestic surrounding as well as the wider political arena. It’s the interplay of private and public, traditional and contemporary, female and feminine which is so intriguing in Boutaba’s work. Lahd Gallery is proud to be featuring such powerful work.

Sadiq Toma – I am not an excavator or an archaeologist

‘Memory is a great artist. For every man and for every woman it makes the recollection

of his or her life a work of art and an unfaithful record.’ French author, Andre Maurois

The Iraqi artist Sadiq Toma’s work, explores the art of memory or ars memoriae. This is an ancient collection of techniques which aids recall by managing the impressions memory creates. It allows a person to improve their ability to remember while also helping with the formulation of ideas.  Toma is also keen to point out memory is a construct. He says it is a fragment, a subjective perspective and should always be viewed with an element of scepticism.

The overall concept of ars memoriae has existed for thousands of years. Pythogorans and Ancient Egyptians were certainly aware of techniques such as associating emotionally striking memories with specific locations. Or making inks between groups of images or images with schematic graphics like signs. All forms of markings do, in fact all play their part. Toma has used these practices to represent perspectives in new and dynamic forms.

For Sadiq Toma, it is evident, new themes and inspiration, ironically, come from distant memories and the past. Yet, Toma is not content to merely excavate his own personal memories. He also embraces the memories of an entire ancient civilisation belonging to Iraq. He constantly searches for a sense of fulfilment across a canvas. Although Toma, like all humanity, is influenced by the past, he is equally concerned by the present or future. Both of which are destined, in themselves, to be transformed into memory.

Sumerian art is also an influence, but Toma has no desire to be either excavator or archaeologist. He constantly searches for a fresh view of life, death, love and ritual as seen in his work entitled, Love Poem. He acknowledges Gilgamesh and his own quest and questions about the fate of mortals.

However, simply by having an acquaintance of Sumerian art, such as fragments of clay tablets depicting cuneiform writing, is enough to affect the present. Toma transforms hidden visions into contemporary forms such as Amorous Poem 8.  By employing a variety of materials, Toma’s work explores and reflects an intense belief this specific period was one of the most profound influences within his Iraqi roots.

The paintings exhibited at the Lahd Gallery(link) show an artist who has selected, rejected, reworked and represented, almost as if he has created a  form of ‘tagging’. Arabic letters and technical tools are lifted and represented. The construction of the artworks sometimes spill from the frame as memory burst from the confines we attempt to construct for it see Amorous Poem 3

He may use characters as decorative texts but does not make any reference or specific indication as to  where they have been gleaned see Tree  Sometimes these references are obscure and at other times well known poetic texts. Typography is refashioned. Words and symbols are seemingly scattered across the picture. Therefore Toma’s contrast, between the construction of calligraphic form and the semi abstract natural background, present a provocative dichotomy. They function as a form of palimpsest; here the spiritual and unconscious appear and disappear within works such as Amorous Poem or Oasis.

As Tagore once explained:

‘'Oh my soul, don't seek for eternity but do your best to achieve the most of your limited life.'  

Sadiq Toma has certainly taken these words to heart.

Brief Biographical Detail of Sadiq Toma

Sadiq Toma is an internationally acclaimed artist, with roots in Baghdad Iraq. He was born in 1952 and worked as a freelance illustrator in the Iraqi Museum and was a poster designer, illustrator, animator and designer. He is now a full time artist.

Toma’s work, explores the art of memory or ars memoriae, where his new themes and inspiration come from distant memories and the past. Yet, Toma is not content to merely excavate his own personal memories. He also embraces the memories of an entire ancient civilisation of Iraq. He constantly searches for a sense of fulfilment across a canvas. Although Toma, like all humanity, is influenced by the past he is equally concerned by the present or future which are both destined, in themselves, to be transformed into memory.

His work has been exhibited in Iraq, London, Leicester, Dublin, Sheffield, Scotland, Japan, Korea, Denmark, Sharjah, America, France, and Finland. Solo shows are equally diverse: London Kufa Gallery, Argel Gallery, Jersey Gallery and Artspace Galleries.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgJGlFHnXuQ