Lamia Gargash (b. 1982, Dubai, UAE), Confused, 2005, Matte photo paper,80 x 49.19 cm. |
Drawing From Life, Drawing What One Sees and What One Knows |
Ghadah Al Kandari (b. 1969, India), The rehab, Detail, 29.5 x 21 cm.
Neda Hadizadeh (b. 1979, Tehran, Iran), Untitled (14), 2007, Acrylic on canvas,100 x 120 cm.
Hayv Kahraman (b. 1981, Bagdad, Iraq), Honor Killings, 2006, Sumi ink on paper, 76 x 60 cm. |
The Third Line Featuring four young women artists from the Middle East, the show includes a range of mainly figurative and graphic illustrative works by Neda Hadizadeh, Ghadah Al Kandari,Hayv Kahraman and Lamya Gargash. Iranian artist Neda Hadizadeh paints fragmented figurative works with vibrant brush strokes and strong black lines. Boldly editing out entire sections of her compositions with large dripping gestures she presents large-eyed figures with accentuated facial structures that seem to want to conceal themselves with long bony hands in highly dramatically lit settings. Depicted in her very distinct application, Hayv's paintings seem to fall under the stylistic lineage of the likes of Francesco Clemente and Egon Schiele. Kuwaiti artist Ghadah Al Kandari's works range from highly colorful, flat and amply colored-in frontal portraits, to whimsical black and white line drawings of awkward settings. Ghadah's work falls into a narrative and emotionally charged portraiture a la Paul Rego, but she can also be identified as one of a new breed of artists — like Marcel D'zama for example — that are internationally concerned with the revival of drawing as a prime contemporary artistic medium. Iraqi artist Hayv Kahraman's highly graphic drawings takes viewers through painful effects of war, torture and oppression, mainly on women. Using mainly Sumi ink on brown paper, Hayv's wide stylistic range references Japanese and Arabic calligraphy, while her stretched neck, long eyelash figures also draw clear parallels with Art Nouveau — itself an act of cultural appropriation — as well as Byzantine icon paintings. The beauty in Hayv's impeccable illustrative renderings, becomes a stunningly unsettling image preventing us from looking away from tragedies such as rape, honor killings, forcing us to reflect on things that we would otherwise refuse to see. Emarati artist Lamya Gargash works seamlessly in a number of disciplines including photography, manipulated imagery, stop motion animation as well as video.For this exhibition, Lamya will be presenting a series of dual screen video portraits, of conventionally posed ‘abaya clad women, who find themselves fragmented from their attire using a video masking technique. The split screen contains a live image of the ‘abaya on one side with all areas of exposed skin omitted, and on the other side, the same footage is shown simultaneously, this time omitting the clothing and showing only disjointed body parts. With this simple exercise, Lamya investigates an often flawed and uni-dimensional Western gaze into traditional Middle-Eastern female attire and exposes it as an invasive mechanism that seeks to probe into the space between the figure and its very identity. |
Lamia Gargash (b. 1982, Dubai, UAE), Izdihar,2007, Video. |
