NAILAH TAMAN IN CONVERSATION WITH THE CURATOR

What are your various processes of collecting material?

I collect material on a routine basis, walking through the streets of Minneapolis or on trips out of town. Often, my found materials are discarded plastic bits and other throwaways, which I like to juxtapose with natural materials in my collection, such as rocks gathered near the Mississippi or shells collected from the Red Sea. Those in my life know that I find great beauty and value in found objects and their disparate energetic pulls, and I am lucky that I am often gifted such materials by loved ones who see an object and think it belongs with me. In this moment of ecological destruction, it is important to me to utilize things that would end up in a landfill and showcase their beauty. I often recontextualize objects as subjects, tipping the emphasis from utilitarian purpose (destruction) to that of imagined worlds (building).

Could you share how the work Plushieglyphs informed the creation of Etel’s Sigils?

The symbolic stories told through hieroglyphs and petroglyphs in the Egyptian Book of the Dead inspired me to create Plushieglyphs 1-5. I was interpreting them through the lens of comfort and softness, and I intentionally hand-sewed the perimeters to mimic the act of carving. These works were presented at a show with my studiomates that opened on November 6, 2021. Less than a week later, Etel Adnan passed away. While processing the grief of losing one of the most formative influences on my work, I came to the realization that although the Plushieglyphs may be the inception of my own language, her influence is majorly present. I knew my next iteration of symbolism needed to be more explicitly for her—or from her—which is why I consider Etel's Sigils to be sculptural excerpts from the text.

What is the significance of incorporating different languages and un-languages into your work?

The study of archetypal images, symbols, and sigils untethers us from contemporary forms of identity representation. These un-languages return us to the ancestral influences and tools we need to rebuild a

New Unsettled World. Traditional language—especially English—can only say so much, and I believe shapes can say more than words sometimes.

How did you choose which objects to include in Taeta’s Tabletent, and what was your process for preserving and displaying them within the resin windows?

The objects within the windows of Taeta's Tabletent were mainly collected during early-stage pandemic life. As I found myself isolated and without my normal routine, I became pretty sick mentally. I started to pick up things around me that grabbed my attention, an act of grounding myself in the moment and preserving bits of time when I felt there was a lack of distinctiveness around me. There are also other objects — a stone from the Farafra Oasis in the western Sahara, a bottle of my fiancé’s testosterone, a broken hair clip I wore for years, an old doll rattle, and a shell my cousin gave me from Mexico. I keep my collected bits together in containers, and I like to play with the arrangement a number of times, laying out various pieces in different patterns and snapping pictures until I stumble upon the combination that feels intuitively best. By patching in my cherished blanket and the resin windows, I add my own memories and energies to the textile. I preserve bits of myself in resin, and these pieces become windows to look through with a natural distortion and perspective.

Do you seek to resist traditional notions of representation in Arab American art? If so, how?

I am always trying to make space for queer and trans representation within SWANA contexts, as queer people are everywhere. We always have been and always will be. This show centers around the exploration of memory, and that in and of itself resists traditional notions of representation. Memory is not set in stone. Memory is influenced by generations of storytelling, lived and inherited traumas, and joy. Memory is queer in the sense that it is abundantly fluid and rooted in collectivity, but there is also a great need to prioritize self-embodiment of these values as time rolls forwards.

Nailah Taman (b. 1993, Minnesota) is a nonbinary Egyptian American multidisciplinary artist and abolitionist organizer based in Minneapolis, MN. They graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2015 with a BA in Visual Arts, and are a member of PF Community Studios in Minneapolis. Their work explores energetic accumulation, tactility and texture, and mental illness and language, often emerging in sculptural forms. They are an avid collector of objects deemed precious by their own criteria. Find them on Instagram at @everything_coming_up_roses.