Chinartree

As the Land Expands, All Sorts of Things Happen - April 2010

By Sulaf Zakharia

In her first exhibition at the Al-Riwaq Art Space in Bahrain, curator November Paynter mounted a show that explored what happens ‘As the Land Expands’ to countries, cities, the environment and people.

Amid a strong collection of works, Can Altay’s ‘Deposit (Spring Deficit: After Dubai, After Hammons and after the politics of white noise)‘ stands out as a particularly strong critical reflection on the dynamics of rapid urban development. On approaching the work, the viewer initially sees a bowl of red sand suspended above the floor. 

Moving closer, it becomes clear that the bowl is actually a speaker, half full of vibrating sand, embedded in a circular mirror.   As this significant feature is initially hidden, proximity gives this work its substance.  The work’s serendipitous placement in the gallery creates a powerful illusion, a reversal of the desert mirage.

The artist’s intentionally disharmonious description of the work as a ’sand fountain,’ pairs the association naturally made with fountains (that of water) with sand.  This evokes a feeling of discomfort borne of a sense that something is out of place.

An architect by training and profession, Altay’s experience in Dubai informs this work, the mirror an analogy for the glass skyscrapers that have mushroomed in major cities, as well as for the imitation that is rife among regional competitors.  As exquisitely designed as some of those buildings are, the work questions how well they fit into the desert landscape, and laments the unthinking replication of the design in other Gulf States.

Continuing through the exhibition, Fehrettin Orenli’s mammoth installation, Conspiracy Wall > ANARTIST.2010, a collection of drawings, sculptures and video, that took up 2 gallery walls and extended outside its confines, maps out the relationship between East and West through the history and politics of oil and water. 

Mounir Fatmi’s ‘G8 Brooms’ is a series of wooden flagpoles reclining against the gallery wall displaying the flags of the G8 nations.  The bases of the flagpoles end in brushes that make them oversized brooms. Fatmi makes a statement about how the most powerful nations wield influence in the world, sweeping others aside. Paradoxically, in so doing they are reduced to mere brooms.

Paynter has gone to great lengths to curate a show that engages as large an audience as possible.  The result provokes a personal reflection on what is going on around us and underscores the irrelevance of the individual to the forces that affect our lives, our environment and the future of our children. 

Despite that, there are lone voices that speak up against decisions by the special interests of the powerful that in turn shape history.  Perhaps it is fitting that Mariam Haji’s disembodied papier-mâché foot is displayed outside the gallery by a nearby tree from which it appears to draw grounding.  Silently yet resolutely, it gives voice to her conviction, ‘I Stand My Ground.’