This article was originally printed in Tribe Photography Magazine
The Saudi Artists’ US Tour comes to Lewiston, Maine! Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia brought 16 artists and two YouTube collectives to Bate’s College, introducing them through lectures, performances, story-telling and pop-up events. Phantom Punch refers to Muhammed Ali’s boxing match with Sonny Liston in Lewiston in 1965, shocking the crowds through Ali’s unexpected lightning-fast knockout. Bringing back this unexpected thrill to the local community, this show disbanded stereotypes of the Middle East during one of the most divisive periods in US history.
One of the featured artists is Nouf Alhimiary, an experimental photographer and visual communications designer that uses her background in English Literature and Linguistics to explore identity politics and gender issues from a feminist perspective.
Nouf’s series of photographs, The Desire to Not Exist (2015) features three photos of a woman caught underneath the water’s surface, reaching towards the light but forever caught within this moment of silence and stillness. Further adding to the performative role of fixed social narratives, the woman is not wearing a black abaya, but instead a prayer garment. Re-appropriating texts taken from Egyptian literary figure, Tawfiq Al Hakim on an article from an online youth journal, Nouf paints these women’s faces with Arabic words “no” and “walks on water and does not drown,” shifting the focus of these signs of refusal to the female context.
I had the chance to interview artist Nouf as she travelled to the US for the first time during the show.
Before arriving in Lewiston, what was your expectations?
I really had no expectations other than it being freezing cold. I looked up Lewiston because I never heard about it before. Stephen Stapleton (Founder of Culturunners) and Danny (Curator of the exhibition) took us around Lewiston, Auburn, and Portland. We also got the oppurtonity to speak about our perspective in Danny’s class on anthropology class: myth, folklore and popular culture. It felt beautiful to witness the student’s openness to us, and our stories; as well as listening to the questions they had about who we were, where we came from, and what our projects means.
The Desire to Not Exist deals with women drowning. Does this touch upon the stereotype that Saudi woman do not have a voice?
No, not necessarily. My work deals with representation, basically reclaiming my narrative as a Saudi woman and a millennial, and taking agency of defining my reality as opposed to having it defined for me by others (whether that other is the western media, or men in my society). The hijab is not just a religious symbol, it is also cultural. Because I live in Saudi I have to wear hijab, regardless of my religious beliefs.
The Desire to not exist – Drowning is the most perfect form of isolations. In my opinion, as a motif, drowning captures an integral struggle in the human condition that is universal to all of us. In Danny’s class I was asked a lot of questions about the garments the girls is wearing– hijab is a symbol of oppression in the west, the general impression from a western perspective, I found, was the association of Hijab and drowning with oppression. However, there was the cultural aspect of Hijab that I found to be absent from that view of the Hijab. In the image, the girl is wearing a prayer garment, which signifies vulnerability and openness to the divine, being able to tell those students about that additional layer of meaning that they were never exposed to, allowed me to represent a part of my herstory that told something about who I am.
So this is more of a personal battle with yourself—whether you are in Saudi or in the West?
Ahmed Angawi, Street Pulse, 2012, 3600 microphones and steel structure
It’s personal and universal at the same time I suppose. I got an interesting question—one of the American students asked me if I was speaking about universal such as: isolation, alienation, vulnerability, then why not use outfits that are easy to relate to? To me, that was really important to address; what IS easy to relate to? Does it have to look westernized to be relatable? I think we hold our selves accountable when we confront these questions, “why can’t I relate to people dressed differently than I do?”
What was the best platform for you to exhibit your work?
The internet is my main platform, it allows me to reach audiences that I can never reach through exhibits and within the walls of galleries. However, it is an honor to be able to take your art across the borders to a such a liberal, diverse and beautiful campus such as Bates College.
Spearheaded by the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture, the multifaceted program of exhibitions and education initiatives was launched in Houston, Texas in June 2016.
To date, the exhibitions have attracted over 15,000 visitors across 4 cities, offering community focused public programming, including 7 artists performances, 15 artists talks and lectures, and curator-led tours for over 30 local universities and schools.
Confirmed locations in 2017 include Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Detroit, Washington D.C. and New York.