Thursday

Rania El Hakim


Review: Kamal Khalifa Gallery, Monoprints, Rania El Hakim

A new show by Rania El-Hakim opens at Kamal Khalifa Gallery, Gezira Arts Centre. Simply entitled 'Monoprints' the new works try to capture the 'melange of relationships' encapsulated in the City, relationships that create the energy and vibrancy one may feel simply by walking down a street. El-Hakims Monoprints in this sense share themes with her previous works and exhibits, where by we see her effort to reveal the living being or soul not as a separate entity but as interconnected with the world it inhabits and the people with whom it shares its space.

If the show seeks to capture the contradictory dialogues of city, living; between the moving and the static, the visible and the invisible it does this so softly, so delicately, that each little pocket of colour, on its small square of off white paper makes for its own little peaceful contradiction - the self made miniature landscape is more harmony than flux.

A birds-eye view of a construction site in motion on a desert scape with a docking station where boats are just beginning to set a sail, sometimes the emblem of a snake appears, and a satellite station watches the movements of beings, who are all but little dots on an abstracted map of town. Do we spot artillery? Is this place preparing for something? Is it all about to go off?

The tracking system with its bleeping digital clock takes us down to ancient ruins and back up to the end of another day and the quieting down of its metropolis. What is so prevalent though is the sense of civilization that occurs within each frame, the vibrations of scurrying human existence - an ant farm - is mapped only through movement and time. Abstracted shapes create areas of settlement, buildings, tracks, seedbeds, gravel – walked through, dirt stains, blood blots and traces of fine hairs.

Skins of the earth.

Though we talk of the human soul as the one which is looking for balance, here the artist in question is mark-making in a way that appears undomestic; like a creature of another species scratching at the surface, proving his existence, making himself vital, searching for food and asking to survive. Repetitively each print is signed in pencil together with a small text marking them each 1/1 (one of one), matching the title of the show; the mono print is a one off, a moment which has passed and will not be replicated. The artist describes the works as painting, and this is justifiable since the print making process has been edited, overlaid, patched up and in places even eliminated and scratched out. Earthy tones are aligned and misaligned with blocks and patches of inky pigments, a bright blue, a fluorescent yellow, is dynamite in this otherwise still-scape.



Monday


Ask me where I have been, 
what I have done, 
who I have seen
I will tell you, 
'what I have done', 
'where I have been' and 
'who I have seen'



Take my breath
and recycle it
for your used up 
respiratory system
I have plenty.



Saturday

Wake up 'sister'!
Like a brat on a stick.


/səˈkəm/
Verb

Saturday

AlexandRA.

Its time to pick it apart.
To make that exploration.
To be in touch with what is, 
or all that you will ever know of this place.
Its time to keep the sand in the hand, and use it for production purposes...
However thinly you may have spread it there before...
Its time to get up.
And write it. Write it down down soldier.
You are, you are, you are.
You are entitled 
to build - so knock down the thought of anyone who won't let you
(on purpose, or dimly not so)
And
You are you are
AlexandRA. 

Thursday

K

Whenever I am scared of new beginnings, or anxious about unfamiliar grounds, whether in love or friendship, work or geography, I think of Kamilya and a number of other women. They, at different stages in their lives, have burned the bridges of comfort and went off towards further living, more intense. They have accepted the loses but celebrated the gains. These women are my heroes.

Sunday


Helene Cixous: This procedure [demarche] of truth is for me the gift you
give to humanity. In reading you we learn that the truth is always a bit further on. From the place where you arrive, you set off again, you take
yourself back up, you relaunch yourself, you do not sit the truth on your knees. Truth makes you tick [La verite tefait marcher] in all the senses of the word. It's also the law of writing: one can only write in the direction of that which does not let itself be written and which one must try to write. What I can write is already written, it is no longer of interest. I always head towards the most frightening. This is what makes writing thrilling but painful. I write towards what I flee. I dream about it. It is
always a jardin d'Essai, but it is an infernal, expelling garden.

Saturday


the greed is the unraveling



Sensuality often makes love grow too quickly, so that the root remains weak and is easy to pull out
I think I shall fall in love with grammar

I want to read Caribbean literature



Re-construction site