Amin explores many identities of a person in new expo
‘Like Russian Dolls’ interlaces symbolism and allegory into one story
IBy Cinatra Alvares
n her latest exhibition, Shurooq Amin, makes an inquiry into the many identities contained in a person, a consequence of the steady accumulation of our histories and time looping us into patterns of infinite regress.
“Like Russian Dolls, We Nest in Previous Selves” interlaces symbolism and allegory, history and poetry, politics and society, all into one story. The works hosted at the Contemporary Art Platform reveal a two-year journey that explores how the private and public play on each other back and forth within the tiny seed of our ancestors that nestles inside each one of us, just like the Russian Doll.
Four years on from her last solo exhibition in Kuwait, It’s a Man’s World, Amin returns with the same bold and brave fervour, after completing two artist residencies in Italy and New York in the gap years. Inspiration hit Amin and ideas simmered without a care for her need of a respite. She recounts how she encountered the first idea for her show on her way back from Italy, “On an airport bus one day, I noticed a woman standing between her three children. The two boys were dressed in jeans and t-shirts and the young girl and her mother were in plain black abayas, tightly raised up to cover half of the chin and sternly lowered to cover half the forehead. There was nothing religious about the mother’s austerity, it seemed more a cultural barrier that limited her perception. I realized in that moment, observing her, that she was my audience.”
Discussion
In that moment, Amin realised her deep desire to reach out to this woman even as she accepted the improbability of the woman ever attending her show or accepting her ideas. So she settled for a metaphorical insertion and the woman came to be represented by mannequins installed in the gallery – a passerby who walked in with her shopping bags or a visitor sitting on the bench, intently contemplating a painting. To other viewers, she is an anomaly; almost real at first glance but unnerving in the discovery of in-animation. She is a jarring fixture in the room and a focal point in the discussion of the reach and scope of art in Kuwait.
“Like Russian Dolls, we nest in previous selves”, is a line from a poem by American poet Diane Ackerman. Amin chose it to highlight the bearing of our ancestry on our present self. “No matter how civilized we think we are, no matter how far we believe we have evolved, no matter how much progress we think we have achieved, we still ‘nest in previous selves’. There is still the DNA of thousands of years of ancestry, the seed of the barbarian within us, there is still evil inside us, if given a chance to rise from the darkness. There is the internal human struggle of good versus evil. We all work so hard on ourselves to evolve and move forward psychologically, mentally, emotionally, and physically, and yet, there remains inside us the seed of our ancestors, people we never knew, whose blood runs through our veins, whose identity shapes ours despite how much we fight it, whose history haunts us. Can we change our DNA?”
The characters in the series are found perched on chairs; in positions of power, dogmatic in principles and entitled to privilege. For the first time, the masks are off, but secrets still remain, trapped in bottles of Ciroc cradled in the lap of
A photo from Shurooq Amin’s latest exhibition at the Contemporary Art Platform.
my children and my family at the time, for months after the incident was immense.”
Today, somehow still stuck with that label of a censored, banned, controversial artist, Amin wants more, “I am more than that which is why this show for me is so important. This show is more than that. This show is not here to shock. This show is not about me being a controversial artist. This show is about me evolving as a human being i.e. as an artist, a woman, a thinker and as a human being.”
Among the large scale works of art are ink drawings, meticulous and meditative. “When I did my New York residency, I decided that I didn’t want to work on large scale paintings at the residency because it is a nightmare to ship them back to Kuwait or Dubai so tried a different approach. I decided to do the ink drawings because they can fit into the bottom of my suitcase and that is how they came about. I haven’t done ink drawings since I was 16 but I love doing these, they were very therapeutic. The lines go on forever.”
While purposefully working towards her exhibition, Amin has also being
Left: Shurooq Amin and (above) one
of her paintings.
Being an artist is less challenging now than when she first started, Amin informs. “When I was younger, art was a joke, it was considered a hobby. Now people are studying art. When I was a kid, no family would send you to study art. It was impossible. I was forced to study literature because studying art was considered ridiculous. I encountered a lot of ‘No’s’ in my time. But thankfully today families are much more accepting and are sending their children out to Art Institutes around the world.”
“I never studied art in college for example. It was all trial and error for me, all self experimentation and all self taught. But in a way, that worked to my advantage because it made me come up with my own school and style. When I did this kind of art, nobody was doing it in Kuwait. There was no name for it. Now, a lot of people are doing it.”
Amin believes that the art scene in Kuwait is improving in some ways but has concerns about others. “I feel that some people are lazy because digital art is very popular now. Artists are depending a lot on the computer. There is a lot less manual work. My paintings are done manually from A to Z even though they look like digital. It is so rare to have an artist do his or her piece alone these days. People have helpers, assistants, and whole factories producing work for them. A lot of work is done secondary and it is acceptable in the art world. But I don’t really like that. I am old fashioned that way. I really believe that your hands and your fingers, your soul has to be in every piece of it, for it to truly be of value in the long term.”
Pressure
She adds that artists today face the added pressure of commercialising their work to make money. “I know a lot of artists who started out like me and gave in to commercialism because it is too difficult and they needed to make the money, and I don’t blame them. I myself decided not to go that way. I decided to suffer economically and financially and wait it out. I see my work in a museum, and being pivotal in Kuwait history of art. I have a responsibility towards my collectors, people who buy my work at an expensive rate. I want them to be happy ten years from now, twenty years from now. That is what matters to me, the future – the vision beyond my existence.”
Amin hopes that her exhibition will compel visitors to consider how art connects us to our inner demons and inner angels, the taboos in our society and a reflection of everything we are going through. “I hope that they can see that there is value in art, there is value in it beyond the image. There is value in the concept, the technique, the procurement of art. Art tells our story. If you walk through my exhibition and focus on the details and the symbolism, everything has a meaning. If you don’t miss those things, you can see how everything connects together. You will definitely leave with a much more open mind, a broader view of philosophy, life, society, religion, spirituality, science, all of it.”
At the launch of a new decade, Amin imagines herself on an island, painting in a little bamboo bungalow overlooking the sea. “I don’t want to be in Kuwait simply because I have outgrown my country. My country can’t keep up with me and I feel that I need to be in a place that will expand my horizons, broaden my mind and push me to beyond my capabilities. I need that challenge and Kuwait doesn’t challenge me anymore.”