CANVAS GUIDE

ARTIST INTERVIEW: AL BRAITHWAITE

Mirrors as well as portraits of Middle Eastern royalty are found in the works displayed in Transgressions, your current exhibition at XVA Gallery. What made you choose such a medium and technique for these new works?

The technique sheds light on my creative process and the way that I look at the different events and objects that surround me. I aim to create artworks that can hold many positions simultaneously. In the pieces in Transgressions, the viewer looks at their reflection in the mirror and sees something in front of them that they don't expect. The mirrors are a good technique to bring the viewer into the picture and engage them with the artwork, thus creating an interactive dialogue. Most of my work is about trying to get beyond the extreme of two polarities - both thematically and technically. In the portrait works, one of the main polarities is the position of the infant embodied by the colourful drawing and the ancestor, represented by the European antique mirror and frames which are from France, Spain and Scotland. At the same time the work exposes the realm of something more naïve seen through the child-like drawings on the mirrors within the frames; this idea of innocence is seemingly forced to co-inhabit within this other more adult sphere. 

You deal with the theme of de-contextualisation in your work. Why is it so interesting to you to constantly re-appropriate and re-locate subject matters and particular items?

I am interested in trying to reappraise what everyone is looking at. By experimenting with new concepts through the forms you are dealing with, you come up with new ways of viewing something. It is like a sounding board for testing what you thought you knew because it is engraved in your subconscious and where you thought you stood in relation to a mass-media subject. Through the re-positioning of the objects in my work I am touching on history and the way that the present relates to what has happened before; I am questioning what happens when you put things out of sequence.

The works comprise portraits of eminent Middle Eastern leaders such as Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Why did you apply this particular technique within a Middle Eastern context and not use Western leaders, for example?

These leaders are globally significant. You are right to put them on a map which might be associated to the Middle East, but I am interested in ideological struggles wherever they may occur. I get a lot of questions pertaining to my regional focus [of the Middle East] and it just so happens that over the last decade the media has been dominated by themes such as the War on Terror and the Arab Spring. My own identity comprises a hybridised viewpoint of London and Dubai, as I am based in these two cities. This allows me to see things from a different perspective across the Northern hemisphere. Arguments about territory seem to be too one-dimensional, so I am often trying to undermine that language in my work.

You were born in Germany, are British by nationality and tackle issues pertaining to the Middle East through your art. How would you define your own identity?

I am wrapped up within the same system of judgment and expectation as anybody else. My identity is not for me to decide; it is something that other people will work out. I strongly believe that identity can be heavily negotiated and I think that you can be encouraged to think differently depending on where you have been and what you have been exposed to. The challenge is to be apathetic and be able to put myself in others' positions both culturally and socially. For this reason, I don't have any specific allegiances to any form of nationalism or political viewpoints.

When did you first become interested in the Middle East?

It started off a long time ago as a project with three of my friends, where we drove around the region's art exhibitions and workshops. The impetus of the project came from being frustrated with the xenophobia that exists internationally regarding the Middle East. The purpose of being on the ground and discovering the region's art scene ourselves was to try and expose the truth because there seemed to be something wrong with the way the images of the Middle East were leaving this region and being received on the outside. My work over the last 10 years has taken me to a lot of different places in the region - many of which I couldn't have imagined had I not visited myself.

You've witnessed the fall of Saddam Hussein, you were in London when the underground system was bombed and you were a resident near Ground Zero in New York. How have these experiences influenced your artistic practice?

I spend time thinking about how to frame the results of these experiences. If your thoughts are a secretion of the brain and your brain is wired up to your senses, then you are constantly trying to make sense of everything that you feel all at once; these thoughts and emotions transform themselves into a galaxy that you must constantly sift through. In my work, I tackle the concept of innocence compromised by experience; being a witness to geopolitical events is something that I seek and I have made it my business to be integrated in the process. The realm of that experience then directly interferes with the process of creating my art.

The scale of your work is generally not very large. Is there a specific reason behind this?

I never work on a massive scale as I use found objects and prefer items that can be hand-held. The works are never much bigger than the human body because I am drawn to scales that are manageable in terms of my own hand. I also want audiences to be able to have a personal narrative and move around the works as opposed to feeling dwarfed and overwhelmed by the pieces.

You are constantly travelling across the region; is that how you stay informed for your art?

I am quite a curious person, so I am constantly moving around, reading, and informing myself. I have an appetite for different experiences and positions and I keep a broad diet when it comes to my access to information. I am always asking myself, 'What is important?', 'Where should I be now?', 'Where does power reside?' 'How should I interpret mass-mediated news or geopolitical events?' With the Internet, we are now bombarded by news and the challenge is not to be overwhelmed by the volume of information and to effectively navigate it and be satisfied with your filtering.

Transgressions runs at XVA Gallery DIFC from 15 January-13 February.

By Rebecca Anne Proctor and Tala Chukri

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