Ricochet

Through Ricochet, five Saudi artists attempt to use specific themes that are, together, unique to the Kingdom to deconstruct it.
Abdulnasser Gharem conducts Hejama, an Islamic physiological cleansing ritual of, literally, bad blood, on the Arab world. Gharem is wondering what the place of traditional treatments is among contemporary pains. With Iconoclasm, Shaweesh dialectically meta-ironises a Sheikh’s bust of C4 with a bomb trigger behind who would (self?)-detonate at such taboo representations, preferably with people around. Then Dhafer Al Shehri collages and further de-personalises the crowd–reverent pilgrims, overconfident football fans and egalitarian graves all while the measure and value of the individual remains in free fall. Again, the individual is semi-consciously choosing to belong to community rather than herself. For Ajlan the mosque is a conduit for the symbolic power wielded by all those above the unwitting individual; from elder brother to father, neighbourly imam and, eventually, the state. The mosque is the public square reincarnate but with attendance mandatory, at least socially. Then Njoud Alanbari reminds us of the pressures expected of a young Saudi at school and how tricky it can be to emerge unscathed; she attempts to show the preemptive, often self-fulfilling, warnings that at times introduce the very attitudes it aims to counter (porn and drug warnings to 11 year old girls) and at others breeds intolerance to others (do not be like the Jews) and at even others are xenophobic (do not travel abroad). Young girls receive these messages every morning under the patronage of pointed swords– they are already at daily war with the exotic other. Finally there is Aniconsim, a mannequin that Abdulnasser bought in Dubai but could not bring home because of its (nude?) form and so they had to literally and metaphorically deconstruct and divide it among different cars to bring it in and to be constructed inside. And Aniconsim is the satire of achievement of what should not be an achievement at all.
So what do they want? Perhaps not choose between what is their context and what is not. They want to understand how to be here and there without having to be quantum. They want visual representation to be as legitimate as its oral counter part. Ricochet is their counter act attempt to achieve that. There will be more as this is surely not enough to see centuries of heritage. And what is one left with if she cannot understand? They attempt to understand why things are so and why they cannot be. They are curious why visual identity is so censored while oral identity is celebrated. They question the inherence of an allergy to the form of the aesthetic, functioning or not. It doesn’t aim to propose alternatives but simply, and impossibly, to understand. Can we understand identity? And when we do, can we visualise it (again)? And then exhibit it? And when we do, why? This is a task doomed in its ambition… but perhaps the exhibition is the work. Perhaps it is to test drive, even for Njoud, an aesthetic among people. For now it’s in London. For now you are here.