Alymamah Rashed Kuwaiti , b. 1994
I choose to carry you above my body (settle in my soul) , 2023
Oil on canvas
81 x 51 cm
Copyright The Artist
Fragments of memory gather on the shore: I collect a fighting conch, a Venus sunray, an eastern Murix, and a sprial whorl. I collect broken Kashi, the Kuwaiti term for...
Fragments of memory gather on the shore:
I collect a fighting conch, a Venus sunray, an eastern Murix, and a sprial whorl.
I collect broken Kashi, the Kuwaiti term for Terazzo, fragments from the abandond Al Sanad Mosque.
I collect a lost pottery fragment from the bronze age with three stripes on it.
I collect beach rocks near Al-Khudr’s lost myth.
My spirit hides, my body curves, and my eyes withhold the history of Failaka.
The works presented by Alymamah Rashed in Mena Art Fair introduce her current research of mythology, objecthood, artefacts, and lost fragments of Failaka Island in Kuwait. Failaka has been a land of transit history starting from the bronze age, the Greek Hellenistic era, and all the way to the post gulf war of Kuwait and Iraq. The island is preserved through its apocalyptic presence, yet, Rashed wanted to produce her own relationship to the island through its current natural and geological conditions. Rashed collected found objects from the island, such seashells, terrazzo, pottery fragments, and beach rocks. Each collected object is dissected and studied through the figures expansion and shrinkage. Each figure is a spirit that lives within the found fragment creating a metamorphic body in existence. In other words, the body wears the spirit and the spirit does not wear the body. The distinction between the object and the spirit becomes a singular body. The body intertwines itself within itself in order to birth a new shelter of existence for itself.
I collect a fighting conch, a Venus sunray, an eastern Murix, and a sprial whorl.
I collect broken Kashi, the Kuwaiti term for Terazzo, fragments from the abandond Al Sanad Mosque.
I collect a lost pottery fragment from the bronze age with three stripes on it.
I collect beach rocks near Al-Khudr’s lost myth.
My spirit hides, my body curves, and my eyes withhold the history of Failaka.
The works presented by Alymamah Rashed in Mena Art Fair introduce her current research of mythology, objecthood, artefacts, and lost fragments of Failaka Island in Kuwait. Failaka has been a land of transit history starting from the bronze age, the Greek Hellenistic era, and all the way to the post gulf war of Kuwait and Iraq. The island is preserved through its apocalyptic presence, yet, Rashed wanted to produce her own relationship to the island through its current natural and geological conditions. Rashed collected found objects from the island, such seashells, terrazzo, pottery fragments, and beach rocks. Each collected object is dissected and studied through the figures expansion and shrinkage. Each figure is a spirit that lives within the found fragment creating a metamorphic body in existence. In other words, the body wears the spirit and the spirit does not wear the body. The distinction between the object and the spirit becomes a singular body. The body intertwines itself within itself in order to birth a new shelter of existence for itself.