ART TALK
Exploring the Narrative
Children’s art charity START collaborated with the Park Hyatt to stage an exhibition of works by local and international artists. A panel discussion moderated by Myrna Ayad of Canvas addressed the creation of artistic narratives.
Myrna: Hi everybody, thank you for coming today. My name is Myrna Ayad and I am the Deputy Editor of Canvas Magazine and I just want to quickly introduce you to our panellists and artists from left to right this is Sandy [Rushforth], Zara [Mahmood], Maisoon [Al-Saleh], James [Clar], Athier, Khaled [Takreti], Patricia [Millns] and Sacha [Jafri]. Before we start our own panel discussion I just wanted to bring the General Manager of Park Hyatt Mr. Adrian Slater to say a few words.
Andrean Slater: Good evening everybody; thank you very much for coming this evening. Firstly, I wanted to welcome you to our first ever Art at the Park event that we have tonight and there are a few people in specific that I would like to say thank you to. Firstly, START and Canvas magazine for entrusting us in putting this event together – I think there’s been a lot of work in organising all the logistics and everything, but really I need to say thank you very much because it’s been a lot of work and so far I think the event has come out much better than I expected. I would also like to briefly say a thank you to someone in my team who I trust and that is Reef Fakhoury. Reef, it’s come together very nice and I think a lot of great work has been done. Of course, this event wouldn’t be possible without the people who placed the art on the walls – so thank you very much to all of you for joining in the event and for being pioneers in the first Art at the Park event. So I am going to handing it back over. Once again, it is a pleasure to have you with us – thank you very much for joining us.
Myrna: Before we begin, I just wanted to point something out which is really, really important and that’s the efforts of START – Tanaz [Dizadji, START Director] has been extremely instrumental in selecting the works and curating the exhibition, so for an organisation such as START, I think she deserves a round of applause for her efforts. The artists and I sat down today for an extended lunch and we talked about a few things. I wanted to start with Athier, actually. I noticed that the title of your artwork has the title Salahuddin in it and for people who don’t know who Salahuddin was, he is known to be an Arab warrior [who was] very noble, very aristocratic, was very gracious, and I was interested because of your Iraqi heritage that you chose the symbol of the eagle which is very indigenous to the region and you linked it with Salahuddin. I wanted you to tell me a bit more about that.
Athier: The eagle of Salahuddin is obviously a symbol for Arab nationalism and the reason I first became interested in I was seeing it on my old Iraqi passport; it is [a] very static and noble eagle and when you step into what an eagle is [it] is a very free and a very powerful bird; it is kind of king of the sky, there are no limits to an eagle, so I began a series of works, kind of trying to produce less static response what the eagle is – I mean if the eagle is an emblem of this land – if it is representing the people – then, are the people as free and as noble as this eagle? – so it is six works describing the eagle starting from quite a noble picture of the eagle’s head and then it goes to stages to the fist, which is the fist of revolution, which was specifically about the July 1958 revolution in Baghdad, but it is like most revolutions which have happened there – what has been promised is socially inclined regime change but what has been really replaced is an iron fist that will rule people just as aggressively.
Myrna: You also mentioned to me earlier today that this artwork is actually one artwork and it was actually one artwork that you created and then you cut it up into six pieces.
Athier: Yes, very carefully cut it up – but yeah, it’s because I sketched out the journey of this eagle as being very formed and then going through this transition to the point in the centre where the eagle [has] actually exploded and I wanted the head of the eagle to reflect the land rather than just sitting very statically, which it does for anyone who has an Arab passport – [as] most of them have the symbol – eagles generally represent force and power – so it goes to the point of it being this exploded eagle and then it kind of turns into being upside down in an upright fist, so that was something I kind of planned out before so the logistics made sense to work on a big canvas.
Myrna: You know, looking at your works, I would never ever think they are political even though they are addressing a political situation; you are a child of one of the oldest civilisations in the world in the world and you are also a product of the Diaspora just like James is. I saw an interesting connection between your work and James’. We were talking earlier today and we were saying how it’s funny because as children we were all given these toy soldiers to play with and as Patricia was saying that’s kind of strange to encourage a child to play with soldiers, but here James you blew them up life-size, why?
James: Yeah, I mean the idea of increasing the size to life-size was to question the purpose of these toys and I think many of us, as children, have played with these toys for hours on end but when you think of it – these toys are kind of violent – so increasing them to life-size scale, you kind of see how they are – you know, rather than just portraying something violent and there are a lot of questions concerning nationality and patriotism – they are kind of instilled in these toys – you have kids playing with them all of the time – but in their mind they are always saying ‘these are the good guys and these are the bad guys’ – but you need to kind of think ‘who are they assigning to which one and why is that and what is the influence of that?’
Myrna: And you also mentioned earlier today the concept of ethnicity because looking at them they do not have a nationality.
James: They don’t have a direct nationality but because I played with them when growing up in the US, I attribute them to Americans but I know some of the others here also play with them as children – actually I am kind of curious when you guys played with them, what were they?
Myrna: It depended [on] what war happened at the time! Patricia, did you ever play with soldiers?
Patricia: Yes, I was actually given the whole series of toy soldiers by my uncle and they were the old-fashioned lead ones, which probably accounts for all the lights in my face now poisoned earlier, but to me, they were always the British even though they were like French because they were from the Neo-platonic wars. It is always your own country and your own country always wins.
Myrna: Yes, and it is always also what was happening at the time. Being Lebanese, we used these soldiers as Lebanon, Palestine, and even Syria, you know depending on what was happening at the time and what was in the news, so we all played with these soldiers when in fact they were playing with us and determining our lives.
James: Yeah, they were kind of already adding ideas of patriotism and nationalism at a young age, you know.
Myrna: Well, yeah and this was what I wanted to go with next. Maisoon’s work, Maisoon is Emirati, in her work – that is where you feel the ethnicity because even though there is a skeleton in that figure, you are giving it an identity by making them wear a dish-dash and an abaya and so I just wanted to know a little bit more about – again we were saying this earlier – when you first look at these works, because there is a skeleton in there – you immediately think Memento Mori, you immediately think death but that’s not exactly what you were saying.
Maisoon: In my artwork, I am basically emphasising the reality surrounding me – stories based on the Gulf region – it’s either Emirati or non-Emirati, it doesn’t really emphasise on a particular nationality in the region – for example, Emiratis would be wearing the sheila and the abaya (the clothing) and some other artworks which I have which show other nationalities actually living in the region wearing traditional clothes.
Myrna: One of the other works is called On a Diet. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Maisoon: It’s an artwork on an Emirati girls, it’s copying a celebrity diet – it’s an Emirati copying a celebrity diet and how it affected her health.
Myrna: And this was inspired by what actually?
Maisoon: A real Emirati copying this whole process.
Myrna: So someone you knew?
Maisoon: Yes.
Myrna: Okay, you know where tonight I saw your work and I told you I had seen your work before – as a journalist, we receive a lot of images and emails and I was fascinated to learn today that your images – your paintings – are actually paintings because when I had thought that they were photographs because the photorealism by which you paint is just amazing – it is so stark and it is so dramatic. By the way, these are your works and this series was inspired by an actual X-ray that you had done earlier.
Maisoon: Yes, and it is based off a series of artworks that I am creating underwater.
Myrna: So we see in this show the skeletons which are draped in abayas and sheilas and we also see Syrian artist Khaled Takreti represented by Ayyam Gallery and Aya is a representative of the gallery and also an artist in her own right – we have a black and white image of Maisoon’s works of skeletons wearing sheilas and abayas but then you immediately look at Khaled’s work and there is a lot of colour there and the people are full-bodied, there is skin and flesh – how do feel about the comparison?
Aya: Comparing them, I think it is really interesting how with Maysoon’s work, it is black and white and she is representing something that is quite dark, but then there is a kind of soft element to it because of the form of it and the shape of it which is more rounded – but Khaled’s work, even though it is more colourful and kind of vibrant, the lines are much more rigid – so there are these kind of contrasts between the two, but in their own way they both attract me in a different way; they are both representative of something in very different ways.
Myrna: Khaled has a background in architecture and I think that does come through in his artworks; even though they are human, they are very geometric.
Aya: Exactly, we were just talking about this, how Khaled has a background in architecture and it is actually quite apparent in his work that the forms are quite rigid and the forms are very meticulously done and they are layered. There’s a lot of thought that has been put behind how the work is, but having said that, there is also this human element because of the warm colours but also in the way in which the eyes draw you into the work, so I think it’s a really interesting balance that he has managed to strike.
Myrna: I am seeing a lot of architecture when I am looking at this exhibition – unlike other Dubai shows which are restricted to just one artist – seldom do we have group exhibitions and when we do have group exhibitions, they are always put under a theme and this time it is free reign, but when you look at the show again you do sense that there is a lot of geometry and there is a lot of architecture in Athier’s work and a lot of geometry in Safwan’s work where you have the reclining figure; no matter how fluid she might look, she still looks really structured and angular and she’s in a sort of dream state. Sacha, we were saying earlier today when we were talking about Safwan’s work that some of his pieces feature these chequered patterns in the background and you said that sometimes it is what is not there – the void – that counts.
Sacha: Yes, I agree it is about what is not there as much as what is there. It is about the viewer in the gap in the relationship between the figure and the space around the figure and the box in which the figure is confined within, because some are put in more boxed shapes and that is interesting in how the figure sits there and how it relates to that space outside itself – it is the lack almost of movement within the mind. The mind, almost as you look into [it], seems almost ethereal and that emptiness actually has a more fulfilling feeling to me – a fuller feeling that if there were a dialogue going on. It’s the emptiness which does create the strength and energy of the piece.
Myrna: Speaking of which, crates and boxes in some of your works, I am seeing a few different impressions – I am seeing a bit of [Francis] Bacon because the minute you put a figure in a box, it’s Bacon – Patricia is nodding, I want to hear what she has to say.
Patricia: I mean, with my own work whenever I put the box round things - I mean obviously, we have all of these thoughts in our head like Sacha was talking [earlier] about Piero della Francesca – of course I think of Piero della Francesca when I am doing my own works because these are the icons of our background, but the minute I put my work in a box I think of Bacon because my work is about space and light and turning. The minute you put the box, you are confining it which actually strengthens it in the same way that Bacon did and it’s the containment of something that cannot be contained.
Myrna: Sacha, what do you think about the Bacon influence?
Sacha: Bacon is definitely an influence. I was brought up with the Shock Art Movement in the 1980s. I went to university with [Damien] Hirst and Gavin Turk and [Keith] Tyson and all those guys, all my contemporaries and those are the guys I worked with, I painted with and who I was friends with – and I had this massive against-the-movement thing and the establishment thing and the movement was Shock Art and ‘let’s shock everyone’ and ‘we can shock people’ and ‘we can interest people and maybe they’ll look a bit more and then maybe they’ll buy my work’ and it became sadly a little overly commercial. I was working at exactly the same time at University and my schooling was in a much more traditional manner, I was [at the] Royal Academy, I was Ruskin Fine Art, I was Oxford, so I studied anatomy and drawing and to me I just wanted to get away from just over-intellectualising art. Let’s not over-intellectualise – let’s not over-conceptualise and let’s take away from theory, concept and shock and let’s just say that beauty is enough – and so my work itself is just really to say that beauty is enough - why do I need to justify the existence of beauty? Why does art have to be more than aesthetic and beauty?
Myrna: So why put a man in a box?
Sacha: Well, because actually it is not really about that – the work is inspired by magical realist literature so each piece is a journey – it’s inspired by a piece written by Marquez, Coelho and Kafka and all the filmmakers like Mendez and Kubrik – these guys who take your real world – the realist world that we live in and they make the mundane magical again; they create some magic with the reality you live in – they don’t twist it, they don’t change it – they keep it as it is but they add a magical element – they take you into a transitional world. And the idea of my work is to enable the viewer to connect to the dream world and connect to the transitional world which we all dip in and out of.
Myrna: But also your other work is very Abstract Expressionist – I mean the dripping – it’s very Pollock – you are very engaged in the act.
Sacha: You know when I paint, I am in a complete state – I paint from the subconscious so there’s no thought, there is no decision of the mind – there’s action – I’m [in] this trance so I don’t know how the thing is created – I tap into my subconscious and the thing is created. But for me, the interesting thing with a painting, which is the thing I love and I do even though I love other forms of art, but for me, I’m a painter.
Patricia: Some of these are very universal elements – like because you [Myrna] said our work today is very diverse – it’s been very well-curated and the more you walk around, the more you are aware that it is a lot more different than you would have thought and elements like Sacha’s box, entering into a spirit world, the Rumi poetry.
Myrna: This is what I wanted to ask next, Patricia, because Sacha references these literary texts and so do you – you’ve been inspired by Rumi and Sufi philosophy as we can see with this sort of circular whirling notions symbolic of the whirling dervishes of Rumi. Tell me more about your actual work and the craft involved.
Patricia: Well, I actually came to art through the world of dance – Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, John Cage music – that was my sixties – so I started as a dancer with Merce Cunningham – I didn’t think about [art] until I met Rauschenberg – then I switched to art. So for me, the body in motion and movement, that’s why fashion fascinates me because you are actually moving within the piece, so although that dress is static, it is actually meant to be seen in movement – it is the body, the form and Rumi, my father read me Rumi in translation when I was very young and I loved the idea that I could turn and turn and you know you get dizzy when you turn; it sounds like I had a very druggy childhood but it wasn’t! The more and more you turn, everything becomes more disorientated but when you stop, it evolves and I was just fascinated by this, so the Sufi idea of the Dervish turning and then when you read the words…
Myrna: Tell me about the text you chose from Rumi.
Patricia: It is poetry although it is actually the part that inspires me most – it is everything which has to do with the turn – everything that has to do with the waterwheel, the sun and the lover and there is one line: ‘I circle your nest tonight’ and from ever since I was a child, I have always loved this idea of a nest of containment and that’s why I put in a box; it is the containment that circles but some of the circles actually started off as a dance diagram so I would do a circle with the words and inspirations for the dances – I am not a choreographer – I like dances to move freely – but it is all within the turn.
Myrna: I want to go back to the void that we were talking about today – Sacha you just mentioned that earlier today with Safwan Dahoul’s work sometimes it’s what is not there that is the message and that is exactly what Zara does in her artwork. There’s two artworks here – they are made in 2003 and they were inspired by this phase where you liked botanics so we have an onion and then we have a hand with strings and I thought it was a pomegranate because she had actually stripped it down and incidentally she is actually working on a series which involves pomegranates now and [Zara] your other piece refers to hands of power – the strings are falling down.Tell me about that phase in your work.
Zara: That series dates back to 2003 and at that time I was working on a series of images which were a culmination of my interactions with people and that could be family friends and it was pretty much a depiction of man’s weaknesses but in a very passive manner as you can see the images are very minimalistic, they have white backgrounds and I feel like [with] this body of work I was at a critical juncture because it kind of gave direction to the visual language which was what I was visually exploring and I just found it really fascinating to just move away from the human vigour because that was what I was surrounded by literally and I wanted to explore the mundane objects that we tend to overlook in our daily lives – heroes in my images and shed light on them and botanical forms to depict man’s nature such as hypocrisy and greed or superficial personalities. So the image of the onion, it is actually an image of the scales of the onion, they are connected and they form the outer structure but the pulp is missing; so another void and the image of the hands with the strings – I have an obsession with strings as well because for me, I feel like they connect different elements like a symbol of being caged and being bound and a symbol of breaking free so I just kind of manipulate them and put them into whatever way I would like; so that image was just about those rough powerful hands manipulating the strings into whatever they want it to be – moulding into a shape which it wants it to take.
Myrna: A second ago you mentioned heroes and I just immediately thought there are a lot of heroes in this show – we have Salahuddin, we have the soldiers, we also have Rumi and we also have Sandy; incidentally we found out that Sandy’s piece was inspired by a work that Sacha did called The Conversation and then you both collaborated and you created six pieces. The Conversation is actually an artwork which discusses the relationship between a grandfather and a grandson and you picked that up because you had a grandparent who had a big impact on you and I told you that the chaise had a very embryonic feel and I bet it was your maternal grandfather and the way that it was formed it looks like kidney and so you used Sacha’s artwork as a cushion and the other part of the chaise long. Why did this artwork in particular speak to you?
Sandy: It was just one of many – when Sacha and I had a discussion about coming up with a couple of chairs for his artwork, it was hard to stop at one, and in every single painting I could find inspiration to produce a piece of furniture if you like, so the conversation is actually about six different designs (seven in total) that we produced but the conversations stood out. When you look at the painting in full, you can see the larger figures and the smaller figures so it is easier to see this larger figure representing a grandfather/grandmother figure taking to the grandchildren and the connection between it wasn’t just that the larger figure was offering advice – you can see the connection from the younger figures – they were also understanding as well as listening to the advice and that represented the kind of giving and receiving of works and it just seemed the most natural thing to come up with was the chaise longue, which to me, was a piece of furniture which was the most comfortable place to relax. It is that type of relaxation furniture so it seemed the most natural piece of furniture to come up with and it was very much a collaboration with Sacha the whole way through; the shape, as you can see this embryonic seat is [drawn by] Sacha [and is] representative of the bodies he paints in his works. We collaborated on everything – the painting, materials and how the work was produced
Myrna: Why did you choose red?
Sandy: I think it was a combination of its warmth and the texture and actually the colour also played a part in it as well because it is in the painting and we were looking for that contrasting colour.
Sacha: A note has a relationship with the note that comes after it; it sounds completely different and colour works exactly the same way – to be able to work with colour and see how they relate next to each other and how they set out almost like vibrations in the air which you pick up on and which is how you see that finished product – what was really important was that tiny change – a note in a composition of music changes the tone so does colour in an artwork and also in a piece of sculpture which Sandy has done.
Myrna: Synonymous with colour is light and you all mentioned today that you were very happy with the light in this exhibition. I wanted James to tell us a bit about his light fixture over here. You do a lot of work with light.
James: Primarily – a large portion of my work is about light which stems from my background in film and animation. I got my graduate degree and then I wanted to move away from screen-based work TV and animation into just controlled lighting. I thought if I could control light then I could develop visual systems on their own that had their own unique qualities. So the piece here is freefall; I do these series of people being thrown in different directions so in this one, the guy is being kind of projected up so it kind of pulls on like Pop art and comic book art. In comic book art, they always draw on motion lines; the linear lines suggest the direction in which the person is being flung and the idea of like freefall and having these people fall – I started doing it when the global recession was taking place and so in a way, you know like Robert Longo The Men in the City tooted Wall Street business men – so it is kind of related to that but done up in a Pop art, new media style. This was done when Wall Street was big in the eighties and now we have kind of moved back.
Myrna: Just as you work with light, does it matter for you the light around your light?
James: Well, yeah I hope to light in an environment and to do this in different environments because there is always a bit of external light in their own sense; the light plays off the environment – like Dan Flavin – it is kind of architectural. In these pieces, it is a linear light in itself but it kind of casts the colour of light onto the wall itself to create a kind of painting.
Audience: I am curious how living in Dubai, which is ultimately the urban jungle built on light and the man-made world, has it affected your work?
James: It has definitely affected my work. I think Dubai is kind of like concentrated capitalism and it has happened so quickly, it is like globalisation to the max and the things that we encounter here and we encounter at a really maximum degree such as issues pertaining to nationality and identity – issues which are being raised everywhere – but people are more and more aware of their own culture and people have begun to question this – definitely in Dubai because the city was made in the last five to seven years. We are here and making the identity of the city but at the same time we are from elsewhere. It is interesting for us working in the art [here in Dubai] we are kind of making the identity of the city.
Myrna: We were saying today that we are Dubai. This is it – this is as multi-cultural as it gets – but on the subject of Dubai being constructed – we are actually in the Park Hyatt which is actually built around one of the oldest parts of Dubai – Deira – it is where the Creek is, it is where the bazaar is – it is where the pulse of the city is and unfortunately we don’t come to Deira as often as art practitioners, because the galleries and cultural scene is in DIFC which is next to the Trade Centre and beyond and you barely even come to Deira – you’ve never really shown your work in Deira but here you are. Patricia you had a lot to say about that.
Patricia: Dubai was Deira for shopping and the Creek for everything in between and we did show in hotels because there weren’t galleries – but with the exception of today – because this show is fantastic.
Myrna: That was my next question: Having your work shown in a hotel, particularly in the Park Hyatt.
Patricia: We do come to Deira – when I was talking to some of the people in the audience before it started – it is like one of those little private getaways and you know I live out now in the new Dubai in the Marina (I used to live in Bastikiya) and I will come all the way here just for the peace and quiet and low rise buildings by the sea and perfection and although I seem to meet all of these people – we didn’t actually do a Park Hyatt show – we did a show because START asked us and so we are doing a START show that happens to be in the Park Hyatt. Since START asked us we would have done the show anywhere that START asked us and we all wanted to be here.
Myrna: When I first came to the space and saw how it was constructed – I really wondered how they were going to do it, but Tanaz has done a really good job.
Sacha: I think it’s great and the interesting thing is that there are nine artists and our work wouldn’t all go well next to each other if they were positioned in a gallery space, it would be horrible. But it is the way in which it has been curated that makes it a journey and at each point and each wave and each turn of the maze, you’re thrown in another direction by a piece of work and that it is really nice that your journey is determined by a piece of work.
Myrna: Maysoon, you’re Emirati, I’m sure Deira means something to you too. This hotel’s stunning architecture and to have your work in it. What does that translate for you?
Maysoon: It’s a great opportunity to have your artwork in a hotel. A lot of people can really access the place here. The location is right in the centre – so it’s like the heart of the city.
Myrna: I like that we refer to Deira as the heart of the city. It is fair to close and say that I think this exhibition is a success and congratulations on your work and thanks to Tanaz for curating it.
The artists of Art in the Park. 
Myrna Ayad, Deputy Editor of Canvas, talks to the artists. 
