IDENTITY:
These artworks are a result of my stay at the Visionary Lab residency program that took place in the Promenade Culture Center in Kuwait from January to March 2023. The work explore how the face is the identity that we show to the world and the link to our ancestors, and how unrealistic beauty standards are erasing our ethnic individuality and genetic identity. The works were produced on fabric and on screen (animations) and exhibited in April 2023.
Death in Consumerism الهلاك في الاستهلاك
This artwork depicts the complete immersion in consumer culture. A woman is depicted strolling in a high-end, luxury mall. Her facial features completely altered, it’s hard to tell who exactly she is or where is she from. Drenched in consumerism, she wears every brand conceivable and is on the hunt for more.
Such scene has become so normalized that most of us are desensitized to it, therefore this illustration offers us a chance to view it from a critical perspective.
The Erasure of the Natural الفجيعة في طمس الطبيعة
This artwork depicts the power and authority the medical industry has over the individual; particularly women. Here, the surgeon is in an elevated position, dictating the fate of his ‘patient’. The said patient is still attached to images of luxury, even on the operation bed. It also illustrates the lengths a woman would go to in order to fit in the current beauty standards, no matter the cost or risk.
Approbation of the Hideous استحسان القبيح واستقباح الجميل
In this animation, we witness the transformation of a woman through a plethora of cosmetic procedures. The initial features vastly differ from the final result, and here one wonders: is she the same person anymore? The artwork also touches on how the modern eye became so used to the new, manufactured beauty ideal to the point of finding the natural unrefined and dismissing it as ugly.
Duplication of the Distorted نسخ الممسوخ ومسخ المنسوخ
This animated work is an illustration of how women are rapidly becoming duplicates of each other. A playful take on Warhol’s ‘Marilyn’, the only difference between each copy is a bright shade of color. Here, the ‘copies’ are trying to imitate a distorted ideal, leading towards further distortion and erasure of the self.
