Art exhibit challenges viewers to think
Over the years the Image Factory has hosted numerous art exhibitions at its North Front Street gallery. And while each of the displays featuring sculptures, paintings, and photographs has been unique in its own way, the latest show, which opens tonight, is especially eye opening. Patrick Jones reports.
Patrick Jones, Reporting
“TAMARIND POPE SOCCER BULLET WOOD” is no ordinary exhibition. It is artist Yasmin Hage social commentary on the irony of life and a message to her peers, that artistic expression needs not be a difficult undertaking.
Yasmin Hage, Artist
“I am an artist, so I wish to talk to a regular person, not just another artist. But also I wish that other artists are inspired to do whatever they want and use whatever material they can get their hands on. In cultural material you can use about anything, and that’s what this show is about. You have an idea and that’s everything and then you do whatever you have to do to make it real.”
There are no brightly painted pictures of exotic scenes, just some simple everyday materials that challenges the viewer to think outside the norm and to see ordinary things in a whole new light.
The centrepiece of the three-part exhibition is a tank of tamarind juice set on a timer to stir the mixture every ten minutes. What does it mean?
Yasmin Hage
“There is a process of sedimentation. And once it rests, then it starts over again. And this is how life is. You never stop. So that’s why it’s like a person; a metaphor of a person.”
“Well this is like an illusion. You know, sometimes you see it you don’t know if it’s happening or not. You see things moving, but you don’t realize that something is happening until you turn around and you distract yourself for a couple of minutes and then you look back and you’re like, oh my God, this thing is moving. You get the perspective that it’s moving and I think it’s very similar to how a person is, you know, the present is so abstract. You cannot look at it, you can only look back and settle things.”
But the philosophy of life through a container of tamarind juice is only the tip of Hage’s abstract art experiment. Her play with real life events combined with the science of numbers is sure to either leave you smiling or shaking your head.
Yasmin Hage
“So I’m using a poem that takes facts, it starts with a simple fact that is two point three seconds. That is the time that a regular person saw the Pope when he came to Guatemala. Because you know the Pope goes in the pope mobile and he just (whisks by) and you wait for him for ten hours and he just flies by and you see him two seconds… It makes fun of this statistics and all this culture of numbers and percentages and, it’s funny.”
And to show that nothing is really off limits, Hage even makes light of the war in Iraq and the so-called bunker buster bombs.
Yasmin Hage
“That’s the name of the new bomb they are using in Iraq that they implode and they do not explode. But that’s an internal joke, that’s not the real name. I just call it like that, with love… Imagine if this was your substitution, you could substitute this with a real bunker buster, wouldn’t that be great?”
And to take you even deeper into thought, Hage turns to the forest.
Yasmin Hage
“It consist of putting a bullet inside a tree. And this tree is taken to the industry and is worked as if it was regular tree. But it has a bullet inside of it. So it’s about how this bullet, what happened to his tree? That’s one of many questions I asked myself, what happened to this tree. It’s, I guess a true story. So that’s why I thought it was very historic because you can… there are many layers of reading this piece. It could be a war bullet, it can be just hunter’s bullet.”
Patrick Jones, for News 5.
