Shazia Salam accompanies visitors to a different artistic world

In "Formation" Dubai.. Listening is required at the exhibition "Overlapping Voices"

• The artist presents seven sound recordings played on wooden player tripods.

  Photography: Ahmed Arditi

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The artist, Shazia Salam, explores, through her exhibition "Interwoven Voices", which recently opened at the Tashkeel Center in Dubai, coinciding with the center's celebration of the 15th anniversary of its launch, through works in which the artist monitors the space between communication and language, art and matter.

Shazia, who presented her exhibition as a culmination of her journey in the 2022 Critical Practice Program, organized by the Center, works on manipulating the functions of materials, finding them in non-stereotypical frameworks, and takes visual art to dimensions that go beyond the dimensions of vision and image, to reach the limits of hearing and sound.

An interactive audio system that is the first of its kind within the Tashkeel Critical Practice Program, presented by the Indian artist in the exhibition, which will last until February 21.

With her work, she challenges the functions of the environment, and takes the recipient to the voices of a group of famous voice recordings in the UAE, as she relied on these familiar voices that give a human touch to public services that are widely available in the country, starting from automated messages to phone lines, through instructions for passengers Metro, right down to motivational shows on the radio.

Connect with famous people

Shazia Salam said about her exhibition to "Emirates Today": "The group of new works that I created during my participation in the Critical Practice Program represent a series of exercises in which techniques interact with the body, so we find in them repetition, synchronization and delay," noting that the program provides artists with an opportunity to improve Technical practice through business supervisors, as well as research and everything provided by the Tashkeel Center in Dubai to complete the work, all of which contribute to raising the level of work.

She explained that she was able to communicate with famous people in the world of audio through the program, and the supervisors allowed her to expand the method of carrying out the work.

And about her choice of activities and celebrities, she added that she was looking at the voices that are presented in public places, and the identities they carry, and that is why questions are raised about what the voices say not as a language, but rather as an existence or even as a desire and interaction, as the famous voice recordings play an important role in society and in the messages they leave. .

emotional states

The artist presents seven audio recordings broadcast on wooden players carried on tripods for scanning devices, through which she presents human interaction through the different rhythms of sounds, so the visitor finds the frequency of one sentence with different emotional states, starting with the usual recording to reach laughter and giggling... then nervousness.

As for the “mirror exercise”, which I presented from a dual video recording featuring voiceover professionals Dima Wehbe and Afaf Shawa Bibi from Dubai, I worked on setting hypothetical questions for a job interview.

As for the third work, or what you call the third activity, it was the dark room, through which vocal impurities were monitored and how to clean the sound, as it displays sounds that are often cut from recordings for the sake of clarity and quality of recording.

During the program, Salam worked under the supervision of the curator, Sabih Ahmed, and the artist, Taos Makhacheva, and focused on the vocal talents who enjoy prestige in the Emirates.

Through the works, she traced the rhythm of time and space, as well as mixing in the works presented by the rhythms of technology and the body. We find that she relies on repetition, synchronization, and slowness in repeating the only sentence she presents in the seven recordings, which is the sentence “Terms and Conditions apply.”

Regarding the challenges of working on sound, Shazia Salam saw that the exhibition carries a special, different and new way of expressing the idea, and perhaps the audience is not accustomed to this type of work, but the sound deserves attention.

And she praised «Tashkeel Center and the program that supports artists, as it is a place that combines all kinds of creativity and does not stop at the borders of plastic art, but rather reaches design and fashion, and this in itself creates a different sensory experience for the creator».

Shazia Salam:

• «Tashkeel Center in Dubai supports artists, as it is a place that combines all kinds of creativity and does not stop at the borders of plastic art».

Biography

Indian artist Shazia Salam works in Dubai, having obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Manipal Institute of Technology in Karnataka.

She also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art from the University of the Arts London.

She presented her work in several cities, as she commissioned works to participate in exhibitions, including participation in “Roaming Memorials: Efforts to Read Silence,” organized by the Jameel Arts Center.

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