Statement 2019
Transcription of the statement for the 21st Biennial
This dynamic of construction and deconstruction is key to I Went Away and Forgot You. A While Ago I Remembered. I Remembered I’d Forgotten You. I Was Dreaming, my work at the 21st Biennial, and also key to my practice as a whole. The main reason I choose to destroy the sand installation after it took me so long to make it was really a commentary on what is happening to the Arab region as a whole. I believe it is more relevant now than ever, as we are currently witnessing the rapid obliteration of our cultural heritage.
The house is extremely important in the context of this piece, because it was one of the first homes in Jeddah to be built in this European-inspired style, around the late 1950s and early 1960s, when concrete was introduced and the wealthy elite decided to break with traditional Hejazi architecture to adopt a more European aesthetic, in turn completely abandoning their own cultural identity. This home was once a symbol of modernization and now is an abandoned structure that is falling apart. In regards to the pattern I choose, it is merely a simple eight-fold geometric design that is commonly used throughout different forms of Islamic architecture. I really wanted the viewers to automatically identify the Islamic architectural reference through the patterned floor and question its placement in its “alien” surroundings, which creates a sort of unbalance and clash between these two aesthetics. Lastly, even though this is the first time I have ever worked with sand as a medium, natural pigments have always played a key role throughout my work.
The ephemeral aspect of the sand carpet seen in the work can be understood as a gesture that contrasts with the complement of preservation and accumulation, challenging capitalist logic. We live in a day and age in which we are able to discard and accumulate things so easily, and with a lack of genuine awareness or care, that the work merely tries to hold up a mirror to modern day society and ask them to reflect on their actions.