Concluding our series of inspiring and game changing women featured in recent issues of MOJEH, we talk to Egyptian artist Sherin Guirguis about art, belonging, and straddling a world between LA and the Middle East.
By Natalie Trevis
“I have put duality away, I have seen that the two worlds are one; One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I call,” go the lines of the Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi poem that speaks to Sherin Guirguis about belonging. It’s a theme that fascinates the Egyptian- born, LA-based artist and which features consistently in her work. As Guirguis melds worlds by presenting her work at the 56th Venice Biennale as part of the exhibition We Must Risk Delight: Twenty Artists from Los Angeles, it’s a fitting moment to reflect on how we have come to inhabit that very human requirement: A home.
“Living in the Arab diaspora since I was 14, I don’t feel like an ambassador of any place,” Guirguis explains. “In fact, my most recent body of work, El Biet El Kabeer, is about a sense of not belonging... that inbetweeness: A liminal space I have always occupied.” Exploring the juxtaposition of minimalist Western aesthetics against Arabesque ornamentation in her work, Guirguis employs the ensuing tension to address themes of social concern to both the East and the West. Spiralling paintings travel outwards across the canvas in watercolour, ink and gold leaf, while geometric patterns and mashrabiya latticework are expertly manipulated into intricate mixed-media sculpture.
Frequently returning to issues dominating the Middle East – concentric circles in Untitled (khamsa) are inspired by aerial views of protests in Tahrir Square during the Egyptian revolution – it was the flooding of US media outlets with images of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that proved the catalyst for Guirguis’ renewed artistic focus on issues affecting the region. “These images were in stark contrast to my memories and experiences of my Middle East, my home,” explains Guirguis. “I was conflicted; searching for a way to make sense of what was happening and finding my place as an Arab immigrant in the US.” Guirguis admits that the biggest challenge in tackling such issues was simply to give herself permission to do so. As an artist with a range of cultural identities, Guirguis acknowledges her own voice in addressing social and political concerns around events such as the Arab Spring and perhaps sparking a dialogue on issues of “immigration, nationalism, feminism, multiple identities and otherness."
While Guirguis turns to Rumi to articulate the idea of our place being the “Placeless”, We Must Risk Delight is inspired by an idea without boundaries. A Brief for the Defense by Jack Gilbert (a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry finalist) is the starting point for the exhibition and calls on humanity to recognise every moment of delight, whatever the circumstances. Exquisite moments of joy can be found everywhere, from the mundane to the catastrophic. Something that each artist in the exhibition represents in their own way, wherever they call home. Like many of the artists involved in the touring exhibition staged by bardoLA and curated by Elizabeta Betinski, Guirguis connects two outwardly different worlds and in bringing them together through her work, gives us an opportunity to discover some of the essence of the kaleidoscopic City of Angels.
“My work comes directly out of my experience of being an immigrant – being estranged, away from ‘home’,” says Guirguis. “Seeking that fleeting connection with my past and having to define and redefine the meaning of home and belonging. That’s why, even though I have a lot of Arabic influences in my work, it is always in conjunction with a Western (and specifically West Coast) aesthetic as well. The symphony/dance/ clash/explosion/construction mash-up: That’s where the work lives.”
As its equal and opposite, staging her first solo exhibition Passages//Toroqat at The Third Line gallery in Dubai in 2013 had a similar impact on the artist. “I cherished the opportunity to show my work in the Middle East and alongside many other Arab artists working internationally and within Arab diasporas across the world. That context is very important to me. It’s been wonderful working with them and having these conversations across oceans.”
