REACTION

Photography / Projection Art
2010
Series of 4 Images
Furl Artwork Editions of 10 (size 100x75cm, 80x60cm, 30x22.5cm)

A direct exploration of identity and the currents that shape human experience

I engaged in a visual dialogue between my two cultural identities interpreting the aesthetics of Arabic calligraphy through a French-trained lens. Reaction is a series that emerged from a movement-based expressive arts live staged performance, where a French dancer was invited to move with the unfamiliar forms of Arabic calligraphy. It was an exploration of interpretation and adaptation to visceral responses to the unknown. It went beyond the meaning of words and focused on the felt sense experience. A reaction, as the body’s instinctive engagement with movement and the pulse of response before thought reflects the way we meet unfamiliar experiences, not just intellectually but through sensation, rhythm, and presence.

This body of work explores the tension between freedom and conformity, a dynamic mirrored in the pulsatory process of life’s movements of a basic rhythm of an expansion and contraction. The nudity of the dancer as a representation of freedom in expression, while her timid postures hidden behind the scripts embody the conformity in expansion. It explores the moments when presence yields into absence and belonging dissolves into separation.

Tracing the rhythm of the dancers movement we see the unseen pulse that carries her from openness to retreat, and tension and grace.

EXHIBITION
2013 | Institut Du Monde Arabe, “SyriArt” 101 oeuvres pour la Syrie, Paris, France.
2013 | Pierre Berge & Associes, Auction partnered with The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Paris, Frace.

AWARDS
2015 | A’ Design Award: Bronze Prize, winner in Photography Category, Como, Italy.