CURATED BY MOHAMED ABOUELNAGA
Participating Artists:
Hany Rashed (Egypt), Heba Al Ansari (Syria), Iman Hasbani (Syria), Wedad Alnasser (Jordan)
Change in a social or political sense can produce many things. From pain, suffering and violence to liberty, justice and freedom of expression. But the uprisings of the Arab world still remain unfinished business with no clear end in sight. The vast waves of popular protest have convulsed through the region and in some instances overthrown long-ruling dictators. But few if any of the uprisings have borne any fruit.
Although in certain cases previous barriers to artistic expression were initially lifted, new limitations, crackdowns and challenges quickly emerged. In addition, artists continue to face organised campaigns against them if they fail to adhere to certain conservative values. But with every new struggle in the Arab world, forms of creative resistance continue to grow, often playing the role of self-expression for many with no voice. Visual imagery is consistently harnessed to expose, educate, articulate demands, and very often ridicule the various powers involved in the ongoing chaos.
Against this backdrop of fragmented uncertainty, violence and in the case of Syria, an endless cycle of anarchy and ethnic bloodletting, Heba Al Ansari, Iman Hasbani, Hany Rashed and Wedad Alnasser, the four artists represented in Turmoil x 4 continue their art making. With each of these up and coming artists finding their own way of dissecting, reflecting and interpreting events and personal experiences that are deeply emotional, historically significant but hauntingly unresolved.
Turmoil x 4 brings their individual stories together in a powerful visual journey that challenges the viewer’s apathy and asks questions of our collective humanity.
Hany Rashed
EGYPT
Produced in the aftermath of the 25 January 2011 revolution in Cairo, Hany Rashed’s body of work seeks to portray the chaos and complexity of the uprising that unfolded around him. Composed of two parts, the work reflects the artists personal experiences and critical observations of a climatic period in Egypt’s recent history.
The first series of artworks is inspired by the clashes between protesters and government security forces in downtown Cairo during the winter of 2011. The paintings feature street signs and monuments from the area covered in a white haze - symbolic of the much hated and debilitating tear gas used during the street battles to quell the protesters.
The remaining paintings form a second series that feature works painted during the initial 18 days of the revolution, that ultimately toppled Hosni Mubarak’s regime, to the end of the interim military rule in June 2012. These artworks attempt to capture the dynamic at play during the popular uprising in Tahrir Square, particularly the sheer diversity of protesters taking part. They represent people from every walk of life in Cairo. A collective mass of humanity seeking one thing. Change.
These two distinct but connected bodies of work combine to narrate a period of profound Arabic socio-political transformation.
Heba Al Ansari
SYRIA
“The memory laughs in a high disgusting tone, like a freak who descends from my bedroom ceiling to enter my daily nightmare, it laughs like a painful toothache which strikes during child labour. I tried to laugh louder to overpower my memory's laughter so I conjured all the freaks in my dreams and zoos, I wrapped them in lace so they can't escape my dreams and devour the painting spectators. I have raised those animals in my body for weeks and then I released them so they can feed on your eyes in your nightmares in the same way they feed on my limbs in a way that makes me anxiously check on them when I wake up.”
Iman Hasbani
SYRIA
“Death treats everybody equally, we become just a figure on its dreadful list.
I feel nothing, my emotions are numb, seeing dead bodies repeatedly on TV screens, suffering for me became just a picture… just a figure.
The deeds of the ugly face of tyranny is depicted as another number.
Calamity and suffering became media material, complemented by our loss of interest.
All we care about is how to stay alive and escape death.
We lost connection with our souls… did it perish or is it still hanging somewhere inside?
Our tendency to condemn became imprisoned by our personal affliction.
The influence of those subdued emotions overpower our daily routine.
Our faces say nothing although our wounds are deeply rooted.”
Wedad Alnasser
JORDAN
Alienation and exile sit at the heart of Wedad’s body of work. Although her powerful portraits explore a personal battleground of belonging and disconnection, the subject of refugees is currently an issue of serious significance to the region.
As a descendant of a mixed cultural family with links back to Ethiopia, Yemen and Palestine, the artist and her family have experienced the trauma of slavery, forced eviction and exile. She investigates her own childhood memories and those of the other women in her family in an attempt to analyse the dynamic of disconnection with place, time and culture.
Through her art Wedad combines not only her own perspective but also the wider political situation and how it influences everyday life of the victims of circumstance.
Her ‘Women in Exile’ series is an evolving narrative that resonates universally but its true power is felt in context of the region’s current conflicts.
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