DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE: Abdulaziz al-Ajail’s photo titled The Man in 7.
By Anand Holla
After enjoying much attention at The Pearl, the Creation Generation Project has spurred many a conversation ever since it moved to the W Doha Hotel on July 3. With the month-long touring exhibition finally coming to a close, today and tomorrow are your last chances at catching the Qatari artists’ works.
The Qatar Museums (QM) initiative, born out of the concurrent exhibitions of American artist and sculptor Richard Serra in Qatar, picked six local talents to create a piece of art that is inspired by Serra’s works.
Last month, the QM opened the touring exhibition at The Pearl, under the patronage of HE Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the chairperson of QM. It was on display there till June 26, after which it opened at W Doha on July 3 and has been fuelling curiosity since.
As Serra’s massive steel structures across Qatar can stir up a flood of emotions and interpretations in the viewer, the six artists have created unique pieces of art as a response to what they experience from his works – essentially an exercise in exploring inspiration.
Photographers Mohammed al-Dosari, Haya al-Thani, Abdulaziz al-Ajail and Amira Fareed have shot interesting B&W images to articulate their interpretation of Serra’s works, while cartoonist Abdulaziz Yousef and Khalifa Ghaith al-Kuwari created interesting sculptures. Given how art is said to be the most intense mode of individualism, it’s fascinating to see how Serra’s large, freestanding steel structures can serve as the starting point for so many creative stories.
In fact, Serra’s curved, canyonesque steel sculptures at his Passage of Time exhibition at Al Riwaq, which closed on July 6, was preceded by the much-publicised question “How will you feel?”
Apart from that sculpture, the six artists’ works are inspired from Serra’s East-West/West-East installation, which consists of four plates that are about 49ft tall, and was recently unveiled near Zekreet, 60km outside Doha. The awe-inspiring standing-plate work spans over a kilometre in length, and crosses the peninsula of the Brouq Nature Reserve, connecting the waters of the Gulf.
Just as inspirational has been Serra’s heptagonal sculpture 7 – which is made of seven steel beams, erected at the Museum of Islamic Art Park, and at 80ft high, it’s the tallest public art piece in Qatar.
Al-Ajail’s photograph titled The Man in 7, explores life’s many twists and turns by capturing a man walking inside the sculpture. “People live their lives based on the decisions they take, regardless of whether they are obliged to do so or not. This image depicts the options of life,” says the note to the picture.
Titled Generational Dissonance, his other photograph shot at the Brouq Nature Reserve tries to reflect the generational gap and the “barrier” between generations. “Life is perceived differently now than it was perceived 30 years ago. People’s ambitions and priorities have changed; therefore there is some sort of disagreement between generations,” says the note.
Titled Noah’s Ark, al-Thani’s photograph is intriguing as well. For this image, al-Thani combined what she was naturally drawn to, the lights and shadows of Serra’s Passage of Time. “She tried to capture what she experienced rather than what she saw. It reminded her of Noah’s ark, or what she imagines Noah’s ark would be,” says the note to her image.
Fareed’s photograph is a blurry, incomprehensible visual of one of Serra’s works. She said, “I wanted to make a different picture; different from what you usually see through the lens of your camera. That’s why I used very slow shutter speed to get this image.”
Al-Dosari too has achieved a wonderful result by combining the inherent beauty of the desert landscape and the imposing stature of the sculptures. Sword-maker Ghaith’s striking sculpture is made of several inverted swords stuck to a surface.
Inspired by 7, Yousef’s multi-coloured, two-piece installation that shows two characters sitting inside two plastic sculptures resembling the original, juxtaposes the good and the evil. “It is about what happens inside 7. It’s about a personality’s two different extremes. It could be good and bad, or it could be happy and sad,” he said.
