Confused but also seduced by the visual appeal of common political aesthetic, which I experienced ever more strongly during the pandemic, I felt overwhelmed by the many podiums, flags, microphones, and protocol agreements and how the spoken words by politicians interacting with these props had a strong impact on the way we were to live our lives.
The works here were made in the past two years of world pandemic crisis. I felt the need to fulfill my everyday life-tasks, while keeping a pace and minimizing time loss.
The displayed works include machine-stitched pieces, embossed velvets, and gouache paintings. Most appealing to me has been the possibility of reinterpreting manual skills and what we usually regard as craft and the time it consumes to make things. Crafting turns into a time-tracking tool, highlighting the flow of time and thus evolving into something concrete.
The large machine-sewn tapestries represent some of the world leaders on top of their podiums. Furthermore, the gouache paintings are composite coats of arms recalling medieval heraldry and iconography.
Many of the works were made for Things and Needs (Hagaat w’ Mehtagaat), for my first solo show at gallery Rita Urso (Artopia) in Milan.
Hagaat we Mehtagaat, the exhibition’s Arabic title, refers to an Egyptian television program aired in 1993 during my childhood and hosted by the artist Sherihan. Here I intended to examine the relationship between these two words: “things” and “needs”, a relation also highlighted by their common phonetic roots in Arabic language.