The Memory of the Amputee exhibition, which opened yesterday at the Jameel Arts Center in Dubai, raises many questions about our relationship with the material heritage. The works of 13 artists deal with pressing topics in this field, including how to write history, arm heritage, and consolidate Imaginary meanings of material culture. The artistic media presented by the artists in this exhibition are varied, while the works dominate the synthesis. The exhibition addresses the distribution of monuments to the destruction of architectural spaces, especially as the issue of tangible heritage has gained international attention, but more pressing in the Middle East, where the background of colonialism, wars and conflicts of cultural domination, cast a heavy shadow on the subject.
Various treatments
The artistic treatments of the subjects vary, including objects and compositions, videos, photographs and three-dimensional drawings. Our present attendant matters were forcibly erased in the past.
Palestinian artist Khalil Rabah participated in a painting in which the work of the artist Suleiman Mansour «camel bearings», and how the work during its crystallization, and told «Emirates Today»: «I chose this work to present again after I found a small picture of him during my practice of my art, as I find "Sometimes the pictures are small in size, and this painting is not known to everyone. It was destroyed in a US raid in Muammar Gaddafi's house." He pointed out that «poster» illustrates how we reproduce the painting, noting that today he wants to provide a lot of drawings, he puts details and presents its position as a painting, explaining that he was interested in clarifying who is that man. He added that «the bearings sentences symbolic, it was built of statues, and the statue needs to invent all the details, as the man is difficult to understand, but can understand the symbol that holds, and for this I wanted to say that there is a time for symbolism and a time for realism, and can express The reason behind the drawing ». He noted that having a work at the center is important for him, especially as the exhibition is distinguished, as it brings together many works from the surface to the depth.
Minaret of pub
Rand Abdul Jabbar, an Iraqi singer, presented a work titled “The River Teasers Her Feet,” and said about the work: “This work is part of a research I am doing about a building called Minna Minaret, a city in Iraq close to the border with Syria. I was attracted to me because my grandfather was from Anah, as I know the story of a city that was completely sunk after building a dam and its inhabitants moved to a new city.In 2012 they rebuilt the city, and then in 2016 (IS) destroyed it again, so the molds "It's the only thing left of this architecture." "I worked with an archaeologist, provided eight pieces of stucco, and part of these molds were carried out in Iraq and will remain in Iraq," she said, noting that it was important for her to make work that is part of the city's memory, the only thing left of the city. She pointed out that the films that support the work, have obtained from the archaeologist who supported her in the work, Youssef al-Dahan, explaining that her cooperation with him came after a long period of searching for a source to support her in the presentation of her project. On the work of a project with many memories, Abdul Jabbar pointed out that the architecture has attracted and attracted, as it finds a way to communicate with the city and shared history, and the work illustrates the intersection between family history and public national history. The French artist Theo Messi worked on a range of masks. He said of the idea: «Collect masks from Africa and France, masks have been broken during the transfer, they are manufactured in West Africa for the French market, but by transporting a group of them are broken». He stressed that this work comes on a parallel line between human stories and stories stories, pointing out that he has been working on the project for four years, and the group presented is part of a large group, and that this idea is part of the dialogue held to build memory and history.
Work has not arrived
The work of the Palestinian artist of Armenian origin, Benji Boydjian, has not yet reached the exhibition, as he is still stuck in London after leaving Palestine 48 to London. Benji pointed out that this made him map the nature of the work he embodies in Jerusalem and his relationship with the Shami Valley, where he spent his childhood, where the surrounding forest was eradicated in order to build settlements, the last place in Jerusalem that has not been built. He pointed out that he collected through his project and over 10 years many things from this valley and place, including things from the ground, and placed in a box that opens in the form of many doors. He pointed out that one of these things is part of a bomb dating back to the 1967 war, and perhaps this is why the work remains in London. He considered the work to be a project based on working for art and not necessarily be aimed at material or sale always.