The eyes of my lake smile by the thought of you
I move closer and closer to your granite creases
One red poppy leads to another
Will you hold my traces of remembrance?
Presence loops around your silent clouds
I hold my remembrance and hang it on one of your pine trees
The blue sun rests and your seventh sky kissed mother earth
Will you hold her traces of remembrance?
Your breath is closer than my own
My fragrance never leaves you
Your eternal autumn holds the last blossom
Will you hold your traces of remembrance?
You turned over my soil and hid it in your belly
I picked up the leaves off your trails
Greed is buried into thirds
Romance is a dance of twos
Giving
Taking
Giving
Taking
Giving
Again And Again
I Found You Above My Skin
Under My Earth
During this past Autumn, Alymamah Rashed visited Sakarya Province in Turkey and explored the surrounding lakes, forests, and mountain trails with her parents. The natural beings are constantly fluctuating to assert their presence and essence in order to create a constant loop of rebirth and renewal. The environment transforms into a being of spirit, emotions, and yearnings, perhaps through embedding our own into them.
In "I Found You Above My Skin
Under My Earth”, Rashed perceives the natural beings of Sakarya beyond recognizing them through a simple gaze. Rather, she reimagines her spirit becoming the lake, the mountain, the clouds, and the forest itself in order to perceive them through a humane imprint. Rashed also collected fallen leaves, lake pebbles, and withered flowers to morph her own presence, love, and longings onto them. She also woke up to the mountains and started her day with gazing at it from afar and ending the day with the recollection of memories of her spending the day within it.
This body of work continued with Rashed as she traveled to the Netherlands and returned to Kuwait. Each work has wings because they are meant to adapt, rebirth, and assert themselves onto multiple homes, returning back to Rashed’s studio in Kuwait. The natural phenomena continued to grow in Kuwait as she was recollecting their memories from afar and started placing her hopes of what a love that is yet to happen can be; a union of hopes. Rashed plants a theatre of two lovers, multiplying themselves, in the memories of Sakarya’s autumn.
