Edge of Arabia Book, Oct 2008 | Henry Hemming
Several times now I’ve started a profile by saying that this particular artist is unlike any other in the exhibition, that they are in some way apart. Any description of Abdulnasser Gharem must begin with asimilar disclaimer. Gharem is different for a number of reasons, notably the way he combines his life as a conceptual artist with a career as a Major in the Saudi Arabian Army. Gharem sees his studio as the street (or wherever he locates an artistic opportunity in the surrounding landscape). Critically, he is someone who understands the value of contingency. It’s something he positions at the heart of his practice. Gharem is canny, clever and daring; an individual who is switched on politically and socially. Again: he is unlike the other artists in this exhibition, to the extent that there’s no longer any need to imagine such a thing as a ‘typical’ Saudi contemporary artist in the early 21st century.
Born in 1973 in Khamis Mushait, near Abha, Gharem studied at Al- Miftaha Artists’ Village along with Ahmed Mater. Six years apart in age with Mater the younger, these two are close. For some time they lived in the same studio-apartment in Abha and would talk for hours about what they were making, why and how. When you see them around each other you understand immediately both their camaraderie as artists as well as the intellectual respect they have for one another, though it’s worth pointing out that Mater has been practising for longer.
Picasso once said of the early days of Cubism that he and Braque were roped together like two mountaineers. With time artistic differences drew them apart, and while in a similar sense it’s possible that one day Mater and Gharem will go their separate ways artistically, for the last five years their friendship has been invaluable. When the history of 21st century Saudi art comes to be written this will be one of its most significant friendships.
Only two Saudi artists were selected for the prestigious Sharjah Biennial 2007: Ahmed Mater and Abdulnasser Gharem. Gharem’s contribution comprised his photographic documentation of Flora and Fauna, a recent performance in the centre of Abha. For this he wrapped in a sheet of plastic one of the Cornocarpus Erectus trees running down the main street and stepped inside this chrysalis where he could stay for many hours, surviving on the oxygen generated by the tree. It was a neat exploration of how man must exist in equilibrium with his environment. These trees, a regular sight in Abha, with their crowns clipped and rounded like scoops of pistachio ice-cream, were imported recently from Australia. Theywere known to stay green all year round and produce impressive amounts of oxygen, but the authorities did not predict the effect they would have on local flora and fauna. It has been disastrous. Unlike local trees the roots of the Cornocarpus Erectus run horizontally, stretching up to 100 metres from each trunk. The root-balls of local trees such as willows or cottonwoods run vertically and as a result many have died over the past decade. Gharem wanted to draw attention to this as well as question in a broader sense the role of technocrats in environmentally-sensitive urban design.
What kind of reaction did you get to this piece – you mentioned earlier this was the first time anything like this had happened in Abha?
‘Sure. People thought I was crazy. But they wanted to know more. Their minds are not closed so they came over to ask about it. When they understood it, they liked it.’
- If you had the power would you remove all the Cornocarpus Erectus trees from Abha?
‘Directly. But what’s more important are the lessons for the future. Our architects and planners need to consider the environment more carefully in their designs. Our technology needs to accelerate in this sense. We need a philosophical analysis of the relationship between the technological and the natural. You can see this especially when you look at our water situation. It’s not good. More and more of our wells are drying up so we need to conserve more water as well as pollute less.’
As Gharem explains this we are driving away from Abha in a GMCmade Sports Utility Vehicle. It is one of the largest such vehicles in Saudi Arabia and I shudder to think what kind of fuel consumption it has. Surely, I ask, there’s a contradiction between what he drives and what he’s just said? ‘Yes and no. It’s about appearances. I am an officer in the army. I have a wife and kids, and with a big car like this you become, in the eyes of the community, a big person. You have prestige, status and wasta [influence]. This is important. It gets me into places that would be off-limits to a civilian in a small car. Once I’m in these places I can make art. You see, in this country security is important, and the judgements people make about the risk you present are based on appearances – how you dress, the way you speak and of course your car.’
As he explains this the valley on either side of the road attenuates slightly. We are drawing close to the Tihama Strip: a slither of coast that continues down to Yemen and is derived geographically from the African landmass to the west. It is more wild here, and quite different to central Saudi Arabia. We pass a Tihama ‘Flower Man’ who stands motionless by the side of the road. His gaze is dreamy and indistinct as we pass him by. His features are lean and polished, and on his head there is an exquisite garland of flowers, hence the soubriquet. It makes him look quite surreal, like a character out of Midsummer’s Night Dream were it to be staged in the Tihama Strip.
‘You know how some people like to say there was no art in Saudi Arabia until fifty years ago?
They’re wrong. Look at those flowers in that man’s hair. That’s indigenous Saudi art,’ Gharem explains. ‘Not someone standing in a studio painting at an easel.’
Not far from here Gharem executed one of his site-specific performances.
‘For Manzoa I went to Jizan, and found the poorest section of this town. The houses I could see had no roofs, and sprayed onto each in red was the word, “Manzoa.” It means this place is about to be demolished. Or in one sense that the thing has already gone. All the houses in this village had been purchased and were about to be destroyed. The people there had been given money in return but they weren’t educated people and now they had spent all their money on qat [the addictive narcotic extremely popular in nearby Yemen]. Once they’d run out of money they began to sell their roofs and their pipes to buy more qat. Then the government removed the electricity from these “Manzoa” houses, leaving only the mosque with power. So now they take their electricity from the mosque. I went there and decided to paint “Al-Manzoa” onto my shirt. I spent the day there with them. They liked me. They opened their hearts to me. We played football and I moved among them, like a ghost almost. Al-Manzoa. At night this village became the saddest place I have ever known. The children start to cry and howl. There’s no food. The fathers sit there chewing qat. They have no money. They will soon have no home. On their souls I could have written “Manzoa.”’
And how did they react when you explained you were an artist?
‘Oh they were happy. They helped me take pictures, they took part, they enjoyed it. At the same time, you know, they would be interested in anything. They were like leaves being carried along in the gutter so when they reach the drain they will hang onto anything.’ ‘You know what was at the centre of this piece? Chance. I improvised the whole thing. Always rethinking it. And this is so important for me. I have no studio so my studio is wherever I can find people. When I see the opportunity I go. That is my way of thinking about art.’
In Chance and Necessity, the Nobel Laureate and French biochemist Jacques Monod argued that only with ‘absolute chance’ – i.e. coincidence, contingency, the collision that occurs when two unrelated sequences join and there is someone able to take advantage of this – do you find the possibility of ‘absolute newness.’ Gharem is that someone. In a similar sense by staging their ‘Shattah’ group exhibition in 2004 at Jeddah Atelier, Mater, Gharem and others achieved a breakthrough. ‘Shattah’ means to be broken up or disembodied. There were browned chewing-gum husks presented using protomuseum curation, or graves made out of fast-food containers. As a series of artistic objects it was unlike anything shown before in Saudi Arabia, with the possible exception of Mahdi Al-Jeraibi’s Dialectics in 2000, also in Jeddah Atelier. Tell me about the experience of staging ‘Shattah’. ‘We were a group living in Al-Miftaha Artists’ Village and we had similar interests and ways of thinking about art. We did a lot of dreaming there, a lot of inquiring. And at that time getting books or articles about contemporary art was so hard. Not like now. But we gathered as much as possible and shared it amongst ourselves. This exhibition was a result of the new way of seeing that came out of that. The owner of the gallery wasn’t happy with it though because we had no paintings. He was worried that he’d make no money so we had to really persuade him to let the exhibition go ahead. Then we designed a catalogue and the printers refused to print it. They saw what was inside and said we were crazy. So we asked someone with a connection to the owner of the printers to change this man’s mind. Finally they agreed to do it.
‘Now for the exhibition itself, usually in Saudi Arabia these are opened officially by a dignitary. We chose to change the rules. So we sent out invitations that simply stated the time it began, the address and the artists involved. Then Ahmed [Mater] and Ashraf [Fayadh] did great work on the internet making sure everyone knew about the exhibition and 400 people turned up for the first night. There were members of the royal family, actors, writers, all the people connected to cultural life in Jeddah. The following night the same 400 people came back! There were reviews in all the major newspapers, there were television crews there. It was a great event, really.’
How did people react to the work?
‘They liked it. Not many of them understood it but everybody wanted to understand it. That’s important. The day after the opening we had secretaries from the offices of different princes calling us up and asking for explanations of certain pieces.’
Did anyone buy the work?
‘No… No way.’
Does that bother you?
‘Not so much. Let me tell you something. You know about the ostrich with its head in the sand, and how when you are a child this is used as an allegory for someone who is old-fashioned and afraid of change?’
Sure.
‘Well, that’s what I learnt when I was young. But later I found out why the ostrich puts his head in the sand. It’s to hear what’s coming far off in the distance. The ostrich is not stupid. It has an impressive understanding of sound transmission. When I heard this I had to revise the story I was told as a child. And I’m fascinated by this, by what happens when a traditional belief or superstition that you’ve learnt when you’re young is superseded by scientific rationality. How do you react to that? How long does it take you to adjust your point of view? At what point do you decide to modernise? Is it equivalent to a rejection of your childhood? It reminds me of how I used to think about art. In a similar sense when some people see my work they laugh and say it’s “crazy,” or “that’s not art.” But others, they see it and later they begin to change the way they think.’
Abdulnasser Gharem represents the past, present and future of Saudi contemporary art. He began his career producing technically impressive watercolour paintings which he continues to make in order to fund his more innovative artistic experiments, yet over the last eight years he has adapted to the dramatic broadening of his artistic horizons. What is so impressive is the way he has responded to the inherent challenge posed by Western contemporary art. Rather than imitate the most recent parts of this, or dream of leaving Saudi Arabia to make art abroad, Gharem has internalised its methodology and, with time, he’s colonised it. Much like Ahmed Mater the work he produces now is rooted absolutely in its (and his) geographic and social context. As he puts it: ‘The one thing I fear is running out of ideas, and this will happen only if leave the country, or I stop talking to people.’ So his work represents a commentary and artistic engagement with his surroundings rather than a solipsistic critique.
For Gharem and other like-minded innovators the future of the Saudi artist does not involve a man isolated in a studio, static before an easel with a palette round his thumb, and, metaphorically at least, a beret in place of a traditional headscarf. Instead the artist is a man or woman who can recognise contingency and fashion it to his or her advantage. This artist moves among the people remixing social situations in order to question them, playfully. They are not there to protest, or create beauty for the sake of beauty. There is instead an aesthetic charge to be found in the reality of the processes they perform.
In the mould of a Marcel Duchamp or Maurizio Cattelan, Gharem shifts shape continually. One moment an army major in an SUV, the next an artist with MANZOA daubed across his shirt, he is the ostrich with his head in the sand. While people around him may be confused by what he is doing – perhaps they’ll laugh at him, stand back in bemusement or tut and say what he’s doing is not right – with his head in the sand he can hear what’s coming on. What’s more, when it comes, Gharem will be ready.
© Edge of Arabia