The Alumni Return: A @Tashkeel Exhibition

Many artists have returned to Tashkeel after having completed their postgraduate degrees in arts abroad. What were their art theses about and what do they all have in common?

Having completed their arts postgraduate degrees abroad, Tashkeel’s returning members were displaying their thesis in a Tashkeel exhibition titled: The Alumni Return.  I visited the exhibition on a quiet day, expecting to see a variation of art forms.  What I found instead was a common story of humanity in all the installations, even in the comics.  The shared emotions translated strongly through the universal language of art.

As you enter the exhibition in Tashkeel, you are faced with a visually appealing presentation.  The first work on display belongs to Hadeyeh Badri, who graduated with an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Badri’s work hangs low, portraying how a sick person’s low-slung position forces us to look down towards them.  Much consideration was put into the colors of her work to reflect veins and blood.  Badri has been putting effort the past few years to remember through her work a long lost relative who suffered in the hospital while battling her sickness.  It is love that drives her work.

Color in the exhibition continues with Khalid Mezaina’s cape installation that gives the impression of having entered a high-end fashion boutique.   The graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design was inspired after reading a psychology book on the male psyche.  He researched capes and tapestries to look deep into the psychology behind the five divisions of what makes a man: king, warrior, magician, dancer, and lover.  The idea is to have a balance between the five archetypes to avoid toxicity.  When asked about his experience, he replied:  “Grad school was very much soul-searching with a lot of self-growth in a short span of 2 years”.  He came back an evolved person.  In his work, each cape he designed has its own individual story.

Salama Nasib, who graduated from the Royal College of Art and specialized in printmaking, shares a very intimate project.  Her display is partly a reconstruction of her workspace in RCA, while the other part is a personal take on memories.  Her thesis explored the science behind memories.  She used printmaking as a form of expression to relate to memory in terms of practice and concept.   The inspiration for the graduation project was an old photo album she came across that carried nothing but photos of her and her mother in India.  Whereas the photos showed a tender caring mother to a young Salama, now that the caring roles are reversed, she wonders how much of those tender moments will be remembered.  This is why she etched them in black and white on different print for them to carry on living.  Salama fell in love with the discipline of printmaking and found it very therapeutic.

Another artist worth taking note of is Mohammed AlShaibani, who spent 3 years in Savanna Georgia studying for a master’s in fine arts and fully enjoyed the experience especially while riding around Savanna with the Trash Pandas, a motorbiking group. Now that he is back and able to transfer all the knowledge he gained from the experience, his contribution is a comic strip about disappearing stories that he wants to revive.  “It is an ode to the passing away of my grandfather back in 2015”.  Mohammed’s interest in comics lies in the traditional gold and silver ages of comics where most characters were well-built, heroic figures; the age of the old Masters of the discipline.  When asked about comic creation as an art, he replied: “Comics are complex but not as hugely conceptual as the other arts.  The strongest stories are subtle enough and mildly open for interpretation”.  AlShaibani was about to quit the arts, until he got a raving review on the last day of his national service.  He was also exposed to a lot of critique, most notably, from the animation director LeSean Thomas.

The Alumni Return exhibition was informative, interesting and well put together.  Other artists with noteworthy work to pay attention to include Fatima Uzdenova, Azim Al Ghusein, Saeed Al Madani, and Moza Al Matrooshi.  What tied many of the projects in the show together were the human stories that translated universally across all cultures. The exhibition was a wonderful insight into life, memories, pain, parents, and most importantly, love.