Emirati artist Shamma Al Amri explores the power of language in art exhibition, UAE 2022

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00:00My name is Shammal Amri, I'm an artist and I really focus on conceptual artwork

00:05and especially for the past few years I have been focusing solely on the Arabic language

00:10and understanding it, especially that predominantly the global landscape of contemporary art is predominantly English speaking

00:19so I wanted to kind of escape to my mother tongue and really explore it

00:24and see how does that sit within the contemporary art conversation.

00:28During this program and residency I continued my research in Arabic language

00:33and that's mainly what I've been invested in for the past few years.

00:38The Arabic language is considered very sacred also to our history and to our identity

00:45and I've been looking also at the effects on us and how we function in society.

00:50Words dictate how we behave, there are words that exist in one language and don't exist in another language

00:55and that tells you a lot about the effect on one's identity.

01:00From there I started looking also at the function of an artist,

01:04what dictates my function as an artist from a language perspective.

01:08So for example I took the language of the oath which is something very common in this region

01:13and is also used for professions that are considered very civil like being a doctor or a lawyer,

01:18they have an oath to perform in society.

01:21As an artist what is my oath and how should I perform in society?

01:26What is the correct way to perform in society?

01:30So one of the first pieces that kind of triggered this whole body of work

01:34is taking all my research and understanding or trying to recreate an oath for artists

01:41and I took all this research of many pages of understanding the word of loyalty,

01:45of truth and who should I serve and what is my bigger purpose

01:49and what I should be bound by and not change and leave that system

01:54and then presented it in this very transparent format like a big block of glass

02:01where all the words become like x-rayed and although it's almost transparent

02:06it creates the counter effect where you can't read anything

02:10because all the words start going into each other and get overlaid over each other

02:15and it becomes hard to dismantle.

02:17So it kind of shows you this web or network of when language becomes something else

02:22and not just a way of communicating but a way of kind of dictating the way we see the world

02:27and how we function in society.

02:29One of my favourite works, probably like even the simplest but it took time to think about

02:35was the colour kind of theory reading of works and how we look at it.

02:41Everyone like looks at that as various colours when in reality it's three colours

02:46like a lot of the visitors come and they're convinced that they see nine colours

02:49and I have to convince them that these are purely three colours

02:53and that your eye is mixing the colour

02:55which really also exposes this idea of narrative and perspective

02:59and how one thing could be right for someone and could be different for the other

03:04and it's really hard to kind of establish that ground.

03:07There's also works in the exhibition that's actually created outside my studio

03:11and not by myself as an artist

03:13and that's part of my research and understanding the meaning.

03:16So after I exhausted the meaning on myself I rewrote the word over and over

03:22as though I'm trying to learn calligraphy which I'm actually not good at

03:25and I have not been trained as

03:27but trying to rewrite it over and self-impose that exercise on myself

03:32I also decide to take it outside to kind of the real social context of the community

03:37and for example I approach the correctional institution which has the word correct in it

03:42which are inmates in prison which obviously they would have done something wrong to be there

03:49and for example ask them to create sculptures of the word correct

03:53because they have this crafts department.

03:56Another one for example I wanted to go outside

03:59I was looking and examining the construction workers here at the site

04:04they were doing an extension and they were making perfectly straight steel rods

04:09and that was the correct way for them.

04:11So I approached them and did this experiment of bending this rod to write the word correct for me

04:17which again exposed something really interesting

04:20over time the bending of the word got worse instead of got better.

04:26There's also an interactive piece and it's done in this really heavy steel

04:31and uses the Kufic text which is one of the oldest type that's used to write the Quran

04:37to kind of preserve it.

04:39Interestingly enough the Quran does not have the word sah in it as it is.

04:44It has narratives and stories about what's correct but it does not exist in the singular form.

04:49So I used that font to create this steel sculpture that's magnetically kind of activated

04:55once you push one sah the other sah starts swinging with it

05:00and it kind of shows you this dynamic relationship between kind of two corrects

05:04and when they get apart and how far they can get apart, how close they can get

05:09and also in Arabic words get multiplied so the word sah two times means wake up.

05:17Being an artist didn't come to me naturally I have to be honest.

05:21I was a very inquisitive person and I'm really interested in concepts

05:25and how kind of it dictates our understanding of the world.

05:30So I love reading, I love researching and somehow I found myself in the medium of art

05:37because its capacity to pose such questions and to analyse and to think

05:42and to be able to unpack concepts that sometimes seem very black and white or very binaric.

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