the beauty of self-determination
WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY DEREK FERNANDEZ
As you step through the entrance at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre you are greeted by the larger than life words of Eugenia Flynn’s poem, ‘The Grounding.’
“Not everything is Black and White you see There are many shades between Even in faith, iman, new connections are made There are varying beliefs in the unseen”
PREVIOUS Mehwish Iqbal, The Silence of the Sea, paper and fishing line, 2012
The words have authority and are printed boldly and largely across the length of the exhibition hall. They mark the beginning of your journey through a brave and unexpected Muslim Women’s Arts exhibition. In contrast to these spirited verses, are the hundreds of delicate paper boats of Mehwish Iqbal’s ‘The Silence of the Sea.’ They can be seen dangling beneath the words; sky-blue, suspended and swarming. Wandering further into the gallery are the playful yet confronting sculptures of Zeina Iaali, who has transformed a wedding dress into an upholstered armchair. At the other end of the emotional spectrum are the expressive and dramatic paintings of Marwa Charmand who captures the trauma of war victims with swirling brush strokes and amplified figures. The sound of the infectious rhythms of Indonesian drums resonate throughout the gallery, as lively dancers perform a contemporary twist on their traditional Acehnese dance. Heartfelt poetry readings and spiritual choirs are also to be experienced, making this an exhibition that truly encompasses all art forms.
The exhibition is “No Added Sugar: Engagement and SelfDetermination - Australian Muslim women artists” and has been supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and the Australian Human Rights Commission. The curator of the exhibition is Rusaila Bazlamit and she speaks of it’s origins.
“This project has been going for almost two years, and it was early in 2011 that we started selecting the artists that were involved in this project. There was a national callout from Muslim women project proposals and then there was a selection committee that selected the best proposals which were 8 projects and since then we’ve been in a constant development process going through with the artists.” In total there are 18 artists from Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra who are exhibiting. The project, the first national initiative of its size and scope as a whole, is a significant model of contemporary cultural production.
TOP Exhibition Curator Rusaila Bazlamit ABOVE Paintings by Marwa Charmand
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT............................................................. “Because our artists are from many states we had two intensive labs where we brought all the artists here in Casula Powerhouse and they did a five day workshop, intensively with them that focused on areas that helped their artistic professional development,” Bazlamit said. As well as these 2 artist laboratories, all artists were engaged in their own independent community cultural engagement projects. Zeina Iaali is a Sydney-based sculptural artist who is part of the exhibition. She spoke of the community engagement process. “We were told to choose a community that we wanted to work with and my community was divorced Muslim women,” she said. Iaali describes that this process had its own difficulties, “It was quite hard to even get women to open up to me or to come to the workshops that I wanted to hold, but eventually just through word of mouth and getting one person, then another person, and so on, we were able to form a group and go beyond the stigma of divorce and look more at how the divorce has shaped us to be the women we are today and how it affected our life through religion, through community, through culture.”
“Sometimes we’re shaped or moulded to be a certain way as opposed to being individuals.”
ABOVE Sculptural artist Zeina Iaali with her work Sweetly Moulded TEXT Zeina Iaali
PREVIOUS TOP (from front to back) Resala Alazzawi, Pyramid of Hope, 2012,Idil Abdullaha, Loss, 2012, Asiya Sian Davidson, There is no reality but the Reality 2012 PREVIOUS BOTTOM Zeina Iaali Made to Measure, 2012 moulded plastic, fabric, lace and pins on wood
PERSONAL STORIES.......................................................................... The art on display is extremely diverse and includes themes of war, migration, enforced separation and the sacred tension between opposites. “It was really based on personal stories and personal experiences,” says Bazlamit. “For example you have artist Idil Abdullahi, who worked around the experience of enforced separation of African refugee women and because she is a refugee woman, she was a refugee herself she knows what she is talking about like she went through that experience. Another artist for example Marwa Charmand worked around stories of war and her artworks were informed by the stories that she heard from her family members who have lived in war in Lebanon, another one worked with migration another with divorce and another with spiritual aspects of her journey and her identity, so I think that all of the artists really worked with things that mattered to them and that’s why their artworks are not contrived, it’s coming from a deeper perspective within themselves and then it was really shaped more through their community engagement.
ABOVE Idil Abdullahi, Erased, Henna, Photography, 2012
Iaali speaks of her own artistic process of her sculptural work, ‘Sweetly Moulded’. “This work is based on the moulds that Lebanese sweets that are around after a special occasion after Ramadan called Eid. You make sweets from these wooden moulds and so I took the shape of those moulds and I just changed what was in there, so I’ve put the women that repetitively make these sweets back into the moulds.
It is making a comment that sometimes we’re shaped or moulded to be a certain way as opposed to being individuals. A lot of these were inspired by photographs of my Mother, my Auntie; they’re quite symbolic and quite abstract, but it’s meant to be a bit playful at the same time.” She describes how each of the moulds are made of hand cut mirror perspex, which reflects the image of the viewer, “It’s like coming out of the mould.”
PERFORMANCES............................................................................... The exhibition also features free performances, talks and workshops every Sunday until July 8. Artistic director of the Suara Indonesia dance group, Alfira O’Sullivan performs and teaches traditional Acehnese sitting dances at the exhibition. Her performances feature vibrant, colourful costumes and driving rhythms. The dance starts with O’Sullivan kneeling on stage before the audience. Her partner Murtala is singing accompaniment and laying down a rapid rhythm. O’Sullivan performs the traditional body percussion which involves rhythmically clapping and clicking, using her hands chest, thighs and the floor in front of her. One by one members of her troupe join her on stage, kneeling in a line and perform the dance in synchronisation, not once missing a beat as the tempo increases. Think of the clapping game, patty-cake, but on a vastly higher level of elegance and aesthetic.
ABOVE Detail of Zeina Iaali, Sweetly Moulded, hand cut Perspex and gold leaf, 2012
PREVIOUS TOP The Suara Indonesia Dance Group performing a contemporary twist of the Aceh sitting dance PREVIOUS BOTTOM The colourful dance group is contrasted with the Gazi Husrev-‐beg choir, whose members wear all white. She has also written a thesis about the dance and speaks of its history, “the sitting dance it was actually a Sufi practice to start with. It was used to spread Islam in Aceh. So the main principle is basically when we’re dancing as a group we form a community. So with that kind of horizontal connection there is a vertical connection also, with God.
That’s how traditionally people used to dance this to find that connection with God. And the song is Muslim stories; stories of the prophet, advice for the community.” O’Sullivan was born in Perth, raised in Sydney and is of Indonesian-Irish descent. She strongly links Acehnese dance and other traditional Indonesian dances with her sense of self, “you know growing up here we try and look for our own identity and I guess that’s where I found it.” Live poetry readings from the Auburn writers group were also incorporated. Writer Seher Aydinlik recited her poem, ‘A Woman’ with great emotional depth and warmth. She spoke of her poem, “I wanted to express that women are creative patient and pro-active. In my opinion, all women need to have their voices heard. I value all women form all cultures and all religions. The way I describe women in my poem, goes for all women in the world.”
“A woman is a flower, an angel, a mother She makes light in the sky She may run on land She may be a teardrop She may be love”
TOP Creative director of the Suara Indonesia Dance Group, Alfira O’Sullivan BOTTOM Seher Aydinlik from the Auburn Writers Group reads her poem, “A Woman”
“This is who we are so just stop assuming and get to know us - get to know the real us.�
PREVIOUS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP Fatima Killeen, Patience, Conversations of Compromises series, colour collograph, lace, beads, wood and found objects, 2012, TEXT Rusaila Bazlamit Mehwish Iqbal, The Jackal, Silkscreen, etching and collagraph on paper, 2012 Asiya Sian Davidson, The untorn fabric of what is stirred, acrylic, pen and fabric paint on linen, with mixed media including plastic, tracing paper, guitar strings and a vintage, wooden desk. 2012 BELOW Eugenia Flynn, The Grounding, 2012
NO ADDED SUGAR -‐ RAW EXPRESSION............................................ Ultimately the project’s origins and process are grounded in community engagement. All of the artists involved stress the importance of this. O’Sullivan seeks to preserve her cultural heritage through teaching and workshops, “I teach Acehnese dance to Australian schools, and I have questions all the time about what does it mean and what’s this and I’ve got Aussie kids singing ‘sallallahu alaihi’ it’s not a big deal because they are learning a beautiful thing about Islam through the body percussion dances.” Through her art, Iaali aims to end the common misconception that Muslim women are oppressed, “that’s why this exhibition is so fantastic; to put Muslim women on this pedestal as artists and to promote that and hopefully other Muslim women can come here and have a look at this and also be inspired by the works that they see.” Bazlamit stresses the importance of open-mindedness, “I think that we really hope the people would engage with the artworks and that they would come fresh and not with any preconceived ideas of what Muslim art would look like or what Muslim women artists would talk about so if they come fresh and they really engage with the artworks and they listen to these women, I think that’s what we want to achieve in this exhibition. We’re not trying to say that “look here we are strong women”, we’re just trying to, not ignore, but to say that this is who we are so just stop assuming and get to know us get to know the real us.” “No Added Sugar: Engagement and Self-Determination” runs until July 8 at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre.