OCCIDENTAL EXPORTS (SERIES), 2024
Mixed Media Installation | Cardboard, wood, silicone, human hair, fabric, and strip light
Variable dimensions
An unassuming cardboard box, an object so ordinary yet here reimagined as a conduit for reflection and societal critique. This series transforms the transient into the eternal, challenging the viewer to engage with deeper, often uncomfortable truths.
Dis'orientation (Exterior view)
Dis'orientation (Looking through)
Dis'orientation (Interior view)
Occidental Exports (Exterior view)
DIS’ORIENTATION, 2024
Mixed Media Installation | Cardboard, wood, acrylic, silicone, human hair, fabric, and strip light
27”x 15”x 16”
The eye cutouts or ‘peeping holes’ are your invitation into a surreal encounter. They draw you into a face-to-face meeting with a hairy, almost grotesque figure, adorned in luscious curtains of curly human hair. This complexion, strange and unsettling, with hair concentrated around the eyes from eyelashes to eyebrows, mimics a Venetian mask’s elegance but subverts it with an almost primal rawness. It scrutinizes the Western orientalist gaze — a gaze that has long exoticized and objectified, while simultaneously examining the weary stereotypes thrust upon Arabs and Muslims. Through this cardboard box, viewers are compelled to confront the absurdity of stereotypes, the complexity of identity, and the uneasy relationship between self and other. It’s a prompt to unbox our preconceptions and peer deeper into the nature of gaze, identity, and the human experience.
THEM*, 2024
Mixed Media Installation | Cardboard, wood, silicone, human hair, fabric, and strip light
22.5“ x 15” x 16”
In this artwork, the box transcends its identity as a simple container and becomes a space of profound discovery and existential questioning. It’s a catalyst for viewers to unravel the complexities of their own psyche and to confront the unsettling realization that we are as much a mystery to ourselves as we are to others. It’s an invitation to explore the unknown forces within, to recognize the other within the self, and to ponder the alienation from our own bodies and ‘souls’.
I?, 2024
Mixed Media Installation | Cardboard, wood, acrylic, and strip light
24” x 20” x 21“
As the viewer steps into the box, they find themselves surrounded by mirrors on all sides. The figure once present in the artwork is deliberately removed, shifting the entire focus onto the viewer. With every turn, they are confronted with their own image, multiplied and reflected back at them in an endless echo chamber of self. The box is open from below, allowing individuals to literally and metaphorically box themselves in, a physical manifestation of the psychological and societal confines we often unknowingly construct around ourselves.
The initial encounter might bring a sense of disappointment or anticlimax. The viewer, expecting to discover something new, finds only themselves. This moment of realization is the crux of the artwork. It’s a moment of reckoning with the constructs of our own making, the realization that often the most significant barriers we face are those we erect ourselves.
