02-10-22 | A Context For Making Work
I am a British/Emirati artist and writer whose work is concerned with frameworks of identity and memory associated with the archive. This project will deal with the materiality and oral histories uncovered from my own family archive, leveraged to examine the problematic nature of mixed ethnicity, towards a feeling of belonging. The work views the archive through an ecological lens, specifically using the layers of the rainforest to consider reciprocity. It seeks to establish a networked structure over traditional linear perceptions of time, thus highlighting the symbiosis of archival elements and their cyclical exchange: gathering and collecting; materiality; organising and presenting; narratives and oral histories. The context of an ecological framework helps to plot the complex exchange between these factors, in order to produce artworks whose ultimate display exposes perceptions of interrelatedness.
In order to contextualise my project proposal further, I have detailed three areas of interest which will underpin the work:
Artists working with archives
In particular those of mixed ethnicity and/or arab descent, and how their work reflects an ongoing discussion about narratives, identity, heritage, diaspora and belonging. Specifically I am referring to artist, Alice Rekab, whose work explores how a family’s story and identity is disseminated through objects collected and presented in the domestic space. I am drawn to their ceramic works in which different coloured clays act as representations of different skin tones. Rekab describes how the skin tone of mixed race people affects their feeling of belonging - an idea which resonates with me and I hope to investigate through this project. Then there is Libita Clayton for her 2019 exhibition at Gasworks entitled Quantum Ghost. Working with archival material, Clayton produced a body of work dealing with the mining industries of both Namibia and Cornwall. Again, it is an exploration of mixed heritage via the archive. I am interested in ideas of making connections between two seemingly disparate cultures, which in fact share commonality.
Thinkers on collecting and the power of storytelling
Referencing Susan Pearce’s book, On Collecting in which she outlines three styles of collection - the souvenir, the fetish, the systematic. I’m particularly interested in the souvenir, which refers back to Alice Rekab and their exhibition, Family Lines, which makes use of souvenirs from their family archive to help build up a history via the objects themselves, and the oral histories surrounding them. In relation to this, Edmund De Waal’s family memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes discusses the collectible in conjunction with the dissemination of stories. Finally, I’m linking this with the work of writer and mythographer, Marina Warner, whose academic examination of myth, fairytales and metamorphosis underpins my interest in further exploring the significance of the archive’s oral histories and their relationship to a family member’s ideas of their identity, specifically in the case of mixed race backgrounds.
Time, ecology and the anthropocene
The work will also refer to academic writers Henri Bergson and Daniel Rosenburg who challenge the efficacy of linear time models. I hope to contribute to contemporary thought about time, in order to discuss Johannes Fabian’s ideas on denial of coevalness in relation to non-western societies, specifically bedouin peoples of the United Arab Emirates. This will also link to emerging concepts in western society which look towards indigenous populations in order to harness the interrelatedness and dependencies between humans and the natural world. Ecology is of particular pertinence in the contemporary world as society faces how to deal with its urgent environmental concerns. The Barbican Centre’s 2022 blockbuster exhibition, Our Time On Earth, was pivotal towards examining thoughts on the anthropocene and how art, design and science can combat impending environmental catastrophe. Specifically Julia Watson’s text and accompanying artwork, The Symbiocene, is in conversation with indigenous peoples to explore alternative ideas on human’s relationship with nature. By using the rainforest structure as a framework to view the ecology of archives, I aim to converse with similar ideas. This lens also allows me to draw parallels between such things as the dissemination of family stories and the pollination of rainforest flora or the adaptation of narrative storytelling and the camouflage of rainforest inhabitants for purposes of survival.
1. Rainforest Layers, Photograph by James L. Stanfield, National Geographic
