We started the week by exploring the work of a Korean artist recycling and recombining bits and pieces of traditional pottery. Let's continue the thread by looking at Maha Malluh, another artist who works along these lines.
This artist usually does not create new objects in her studio but, claiming that there is already too much stuff in the world, she looks around for scraps that she can recycle and re-employ in her works (a principle that would be interesting if applied to fashion by a designer or a brand for an entire line of clothes rather than just one collection...), while also creating sculptures and photographic works.
For the first time in history a work by a female Saudi artist was exhibited in public in Jeddah, in 2016, and it was an assemblage of aluminum elements entitled "Food for Thought 'Abraj'" by Maha Malluh.
That work consisted in a series of cooking pots – utensils that could be conceived as symbols of hospitality in the Arab world – that the artist had collected from flea markets in her country and melted down to create modules that could be assembled into an endless column. In that case it was as if the artist had collected not just the pots, but also the stories of the people using them, recombining them in a new tale.
For the 57th International Art Exhibition in Venice Malluh created a new piece, "Food for Thought 'Amma Baad'".
Literally, this Arabic expression means "whatever comes after" and linguistically it is used to separate an introduction from the body of a letter or speech.
Seen from far away the work looks as if it was made with a series of colourful tiles, but, once you get closer, you realise the tiles are actually 2,400 colourful audio tapes, arranged on thirty bread trays.
The cassettes form a sort of plastic tapestry spelling the Arabic words "fitna", temptation, "haram", meaning "that which is forbidden" and "jihad", a word with different meanings, but indicating in this context the term "struggle".
Yet this is actually the less symbolic aspect of the installation, as the most interesting and disturbing side of this new work is the fact that these are "religious tapes", made for women by religious leaders and containing speeches on how women should act.
The tapes therefore question the position of women in Saudi society, and, while implicitly reminding us that women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to drive and must be accompanied by a male guardian for tasks like obtaining a passport and getting married, they also conjure up in their rules set by men a dystopian vision à la Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.
The work is symbolically installed in the Dionysian section of the Arsenale, a space dedicated to celebrating the female body and its sexuality.
This part of the exhibition features many works by women artists who explore the female image from different points of view and in a way this section of the Biennale and Malluh's work assume new meanings when we think about the recent visit of U.S. President Donald Trump in Riyadh, where he met with heads from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and where he just sealed a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, while never commented about the role and position of women in Saudi society. His wife Melania praised 'women's empowerment' in the country and daughter Ivanka spoke at a roundtable for women highlighting the progress that has been made in Saudi Arabia, but none of them seemed to be genuinely aware of the real restrictions that are holding back women. Food for thought, indeed, food for thought.
Image credits for this post
Images 1 and 2 of Maha Malluh, Food for Thought 'Amma Baad', 2017, in this post by Italo Rondinella and 5 and 6 by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy: La Biennale di Venezia.
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