Keep Smiling: Solo Exhibition by Daniah Al Saleh

KEEP

DANIAH AL SALEH

DANIAH AL SALEH (b.1970, KSA) reflects on cultural conditioning, questioning behavioral patterns and paradigms in everyday life. She examines elements we take for face value – the ordinary, the mundane, the ubiquitous in the mainstream – and reflects on these cultural tropes to draw out their relation to memory, connectedness, and division. In this way, she suggests alternative positions and perspectives. Her work is duplicitous: behind its aesthetics lies a commentary on human fragility, insecurity, and vulnerability Her early projects were driven by symbols and Islamic geometry, using the recognizable patterns of traditional Islamic art to foreground surprising heroes. In one painting Pedestrian, 2016, the wooden spoon – regularly used in the kitchen, though seldom fêted – formed part of the work’s intricate pattern. These household items here assumed a pride of place that Al Saleh gently suggested as analogies for social constructs and cultural behaviors Al Saleh’s work changed decisively when she did an MFA in Computational Arts from Goldsmiths in 2020. She began to work in new media, exploring how to integrate technologies as part of her practice in installations, such as the phonemes of the Arabic alphabet in Sawtam, which she used for her commission for the Ithra Art Prize in 2019, or the idea of collective versus personal memories of Saudi society, in her work That Which Remains, 2022, for the first Diriyah Biennale. In each, she exploits the capacity of the time-based medium to operate as a means of documentation, investigation, and speculation She has participated in The Oasis Reborn artists residency, AlUla, KSA, 2022. Noor Riyadh Festival, with the work Love Stories, 2022. Selected exhibitions include Tales of Nostalgia, Misk Art Institute, Riyadh, KSA, 2022. Noor Riyadh exhibition, Delicate, Riyadh, KSA, 2019, Artificial Intelligence and Intercultural Dialogue, The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2019; Delirium, Athr Gallery, Jeddah, KSA, 2017 (solo); Abu Dhabi Art, Abu Dhabi, UAE, 2017; and Letters to a Young Muslim, Athr .Gallery, Jeddah, KSA. In 2019 Al Saleh was the recipient of the Ithra Art Prize Daniah Al Saleh holds a Bachelor in Computer Applications from King Saud University, Riyadh, KSA, and has undertaken painting courses at Dar Safia Bin Zagr, Jeddah, KSA, and creative courses at the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts and Central Saint Martins

JEROME NEUTRES, PhD, is a doctor in Semiology of text & image (Paris-VIIUniversity). His research in visual arts has focused mostly on pioneer artists of the 20th Century; from Brancusi’s innovative sculpture, to Bill Viola’s video paintings, through inventors of digital art in the 1960’s. He has curated more than fifty art shows since 1996, in various art centers and museums over the world. Among which the acclaimed exhibitions about the history of what he proposes to name Computing art: “Artists & robots” at the Astana International Expo arts pavilion; “Artists & robots” part II in the Grand palais national galleries, Paris; and “Immaterial/re-material, a brief history of computing art” at UCCA Beijing. He has also published several essays on contemporary art. Former director at the Réunion des musées nationaux-Grand palais of France, and former president of the Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, he is today an independent curator and exhibition producer. He is member of a few boards of cultural institutions such as the Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation (Switzerland), the Morra Foundation (Italy), the Maison-Bernard Foundation (France). He is currently curating the inaugural exhibition of the upcoming Diriyah Art Futures centre in Riyadh, opening in 2023

KEEP SMILING

DANIAH AL SALEH

Is digital technology encouraging the communication of our emotions? In this solo presentation Daniah Al Saleh questions the obligation to smile to everything in our digital era’s messages brought by the emoji’s fashion. The emoji phenomenon has been developing massively for around 20 years, in parallel with the booming development of the digital facilities which placed the computer at the right center of our social and economic lives. Art is part of this global digital world; It is not a coincidence for Daniah Al Saleh to explore the emojis language through an art medium which is also a language itself. Indeed, computing is a technology, meaning a technique which is also a language. Daniah Al Saleh’s exhibition looks like a mise en abyme: a language technique exploring another language format. Perhaps only this form of art could explore deeply enough the emojis language – as a form of language (achieved or not)? Confronting an immaterial expression of her vision with a material one in the same show is another major aspect of Daniah’s work. The show is articulated in two parallel movements, presenting digital works facing a series of paintings, all focused on the same theme of the emojis language. The last section offers a conclusion to this highly original confrontation, through a very innovative installation, mixing painting and digital projection. Daniah Al Saleh reminds us that the said “immaterial” world is nothing but another kind of “material”.

When the art world often opposes “digital” exhibitions versus painting exhibitions, Daniah imposes her art beyond the banal discourse about digital art. Daniah’s works question also the visual identity of the Emojis, born in the code after the smiley graphic inspiration. The Emojis phenomenon is as well a mere computing form of visual communication as a pictographic code; a visual object balanced between its digital and graphic identities. Daniah has found the right expression to raise this ambiguous essence of the emojis - though the smiley was used in many art works. She has chosen as her subject the emoticonist culture of our time - certainly the most fascinating topic relating to Emojis. A philosophical issue matching with a digital era who wants absolutely to be ultra positive despite all the turmoiled aspects of it.

Detail shot of Virtual Signal 6 , 2022. Paper transfer and acrylic on watercolor paper.

About the Emoticonist Culture

We are all very familiar with these yellow cartoony faces that depict various expressions that we name Emojis. Those pictographs of faces and objects became the last twenty years a new punctuation for our contemporary language of social communication. The term Emoji comes from the Japanese, meaning “picture,” and moji, meaning “character”. Shigetaka Kurita is often credited with inventing emoji in 1999, through Japanese conglomerate SoftBank. Kurita’s emoji, which were intended for a Japanese user base, were very simple —12 pixels by 12 pixels— and were inspired by manga art and kanji characters. In order to attract Japanese customers, Apple created an emoji keyboard in the first iPhone in 2007. Now, emoji are available in almost all messaging applications, thanks to Unicode; which is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems.. However, the Emoji could be defined as the visual expression of maturity of the Emoticon, which is itself a simple keyboard translation of the legendary Smiley :) The Smiley was introduced as a contemporary way of replacing the emotional body language when meeting face to face in a simple cartoonish depiction. Historians generally say that its introduction started in corporate communication in 1963. The Mutual Company, USA, needed a public relation campaign after lots of jobs were lost and they hired Graphist Harvey Ball to create a happy visual : the first smiley face was born. The visual was massively stamped on buttons and pins that the employees first use in the company.

In 1971, a French journalist, Franklin Loufrani, published in the french press a new smiley version; it was his way to invite people to smile during a time of crisis. He placed in the first page of France Soir newspaper the reproduction of his smiley before copyrighting the pictograph and launching an infinite panel of commercial developments of it. Some twenty years ago, the smiley started to be adopted into messenger systems and into the Unicode, leading to the wave of the Emoticons, and ultimately the Emojis. The little smiling cartoon figure has its own large and famous history which isn’t exactly our topic here. It is less the graphic identity of the smiley, which is Daniah Al Saleh’s works subject, I think, but the visual questioning of the phenomenon of communicating through “emotional” pictographs in the digital era, that is in question.

Process photo

In my opinion, Daniah Alsaleh is today one of the most brilliant and promising visual artists in the Arab world. I discovered her work two years ago in the framework of the preparation of an upcoming exhibition about computing art, thanks to the AA&C department of the Ministry of Culture of Saudi Arabia - a dynamic and innovative team directed by Mona Khazindar. Daniah Al Saleh became immediately part of the exhibition contents, as her work features perfectly the potential of innovation in the visual creation offered by an artistic use of the computing facilities. Later, I appreciated very much her spectacular installation in the Diriyah Biennale, one of the best artistic propositions in my mind of this great event curated by my friend and fellow Phil Tinari. Since our very first meeting, Daniah talked to me about her wish to explore visually the language of the emoticons which became probably this last decade the main language of communication worldwide. Daniah explained to me how much she was surprised that the laughing with tears emoji has been chosen by the prestigious Oxford dictionary as the word of the year in 2015, and texts with emojis have been submitted as evidence of intention in courtrooms. With this omnipresence of emojis, she was interested in a philosophical contemplation towards the significance and banality of the emoji on social and political implications, and how that reflects within contemporary society. She wanted in her work to explore the prolific use of the smiley in a semiotic perspective, and create a work that questions the authenticity of emotional articulation. Does the emojis encourage laziness into writing styles, or does it facilitate forms of expression? Do emojis represent accurate forms of emotional states ? Does the emoji facilitate cross cultural communication, or does it introduce more complexity?

Process photo

Detail of Emotional Reaction 1, 2022. Paper transfer and acrylic on watercolor paper, 120 x 80 cm.

I think that Daniah’s spectacular body of works this current exhibition at ATHR Gallery presents today, is brilliantly exploring the Emoticon/Emoji phenomenon as a major visual communication question. Indeed the emojis have emerged to be the fastest growing communication form. They are used as graphical symbols (pictograms) to express feeling and emotions. It is a significant tool for communication in modern society. It has transformed our correspondence lifestyles. It has evolved linguistics into a new pictorial vocabulary. There is undoubtedly today an “emoticonist” culture, meaning a proactive practice of communicating through the specific medium of the emoticons/emojis. Speaking through sending visuals cartoonish faces representing a particular emotion, has become worldwide and for all generations the number one channel of social exchange. Emojis are so diffused all over the world and used across all cultures, generations, and classes, that one can consider it as the hieroglyphs of our time. However, this quite recent form of communication already questions us as, unlike the antic hieroglyphs, it is not yet properly a language, but a shortened form of emotional expression – in fact, the most miniscule form of it. This hyper reduced communication code matches with an era obsessed by the speed. Everything has to be said and done asap – as soon as possible; it is fascinating to observe how quick are the teenagers to answer their text messages. The grammar is reduced to a deconstructed one, mixing an airport-English language with the idiomatic language of the speaker, proceeding by onomatopes more than words, and plenty of signs and pictograms to emphasize the tune of the message. Emojis as a way of translating emotions is necessarily reductive. Misinterpretation is always possible when looking at an emoji. Does the receiver understand the message as the sender intended? What does a smiley face mean when the sender or receiver are having different moods? How do different cultures read an emoji? And do the different socio economic situations influence the understanding of a smiley?

The polysemy of Emojis is fascinating Daniah. The meanings of pictograms can be varied by the temporal mood of the sender and reader. Paradoxically, this polysemy is the richness of the Emojis messages, mix of signs which could happen to be subtle, mysterious, elliptic… I am not following the skeptic ones saying the emoticon language is a barbarian form of communication – though it is the case in many exchanges of messages made with smartphones nowadays. Nor is Daniah in her beautiful works using and questioning Emojis.

Virtual Signal 1, 2022. Paper transfer and acrylic on watercolor paper, 120 x 80 cm.

Virtual Signal 6, 2022. Paper transfer and acrylic on watercolor paper, 120 x 80 cm.

Detail shots of Virtual Signal 1,2, 4 and 5.

of Emotional Reaction 2, 2022. Paper transfer and acrylic on watercolor paper, 120 x 80 cm.

Virtual Signal 2, 2022. Paper transfer and acrylic on watercolor paper, 120 x 80 cm.

Virtual Signal 7, 2022. Paper transfer and acrylic on watercolor paper, 120 x 80 cm.

Process photo