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The Making and Breaking of an Icon

This essay is an effort to write my thoughts and reflections on my art practice, focusing on the work to-be-realized for my solo show in March 2021 at Galleri Mejan in Stockholm. I’ve had the intention to complement and stabilize my imagined-artwork with my writing, only to realize such a task’s difficulty. Firstly, because language itself can be unstable. Secondly, fear of losing a quality in art that is unstable in its nature. The essay consists of three sections: In the first one, I tell how I think and feel through my art practice. I also propose making space for new knowledge: In my art practice, I lean on magical thinking to stimulate bodily movements.1 I think that we need to balance ourselves between rational thinking and other modes of thinking, and this in-between-space requires continuous negotiations of different kinds. In section two, I explain how I think of images and share how I process them through my work. Then I share stories of entangled images that I’m using as source images in my current work. In the third and last section, I delve into my deep desire to control images. I challenge told narratives and reflect on creative practices of destruction and reparation. / @ Galleri Mejan, Exercisplan 3, March 2021 Media: installation and a video projection. Materials: Clay, ceramic, plaster, linen, and mixed media.   The Making and Breaking of an Icon is a long-term project: I repeatedly destroy and repair a self-made ceramic sculpture. The faceless figure has multiple arms and hands that seem to be hugging or containing the body. At the moment of showing the work at Galleri Mejan, the sculpture was broken, and in process of reparation. Fragments of the sculpture were laying on the ground, I continued to glue them up during the show. A shelf placed up high in the same room displays 7 small plaster replicas of the same figure, but with the addition of a horned cap on their heads. one of the replicas is broken on the ground underneath the shelf. The mold reproducing the plaster pieces is shown by the corner and seems to be in the action of production.  By the entrance, a fetus-like ceramic sculpture is opening both arms. In the other room, the video work "Falling for the Narrative" is showing a performance I did earlier with the sculpture. In this performance, dressed in a self-made costume, I interact with the sculpture as a living thing: I project veneration and aggression on it. The costume that is made of linen, has carrier sacks sewed in the back, filled with rice and coins. the costume weighs around 4kgs. In the corner of the room, a pile of dust is formed on the ground.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kkh-569
Date January 2021
CreatorsAli, Nada
PublisherKungl. Konsthögskolan
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf, image/jpeg, image/jpeg, image/jpeg, image/jpeg
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess, info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess, info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess, info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess, info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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