DUBAI: For years, Kuwaiti artist Aseel AlYaqoub worked without a gallery, a grant, or any certainty that her research-heavy work was reaching people. Winning the seventh Ithra Art Prize this month, she tells Arab News, gave her validation she did not realize she had been seeking.<\/p>\n
AlYaqoub won for \u201cFlora Incognita,\u201d an installation of invented hybrid desert plants escaping the colonial-era archives that named them. The prize comes with a $100,000 grant, and the work will join the permanent collection of the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) in Dhahran.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was very emotional, to be honest,\u201d she says. \u201c(The nominees) all have very different practices, so you couldn\u2019t guess who was going to win.\u201d<\/p>\n What moved her most was hearing the jury explain why the work had resonated with them. \u201cI\u2019ve always been independent,\u201d she says. \u201cI sell my own work, and I create my own practice on my own. After a while, you\u2019re like, \u2018Am I even going in the right direction?\u2019 (But this shows that) people actually do care about what I care about, and there\u2019s something meaningful in what I\u2019m doing.\u201d<\/p>\n She plans to put the money into a new research-based project and a solo exhibition, and to give part of the prize to charity.<\/p>\n The acquisition of \u201cFlora Incognita\u201d by Ithra means a lot, she says, \u201cbecause it has a longevity now. It shows that I\u2019m part of a trajectory and a conversation that\u2019s happening in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFlora Incognita\u201d was born out of a longstanding frustration. AlYaqoub came across \u201cThe Wild Flowers of Kuwait and Bahrain\u201d by British botanist and author Violet Dickson, which presents a purple, lavender-like flower as a new discovery. Known in Arabic as Al-Khuzama, the plant had been used by locals for centuries before it was given its Latin name \u2014 Horwoodia dicksoniae, after Dickson.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s this external gaze looking on the desert flower as something that wasn\u2019t there until they arrived,\u201d she says. \u201cThis Latinized name becomes the official botanical name for this indigenous plant, and that\u2019s where I draw a line. It\u2019s a case study for everything that we\u2019ve lost in the process of colonization \u2014 and also independence from it.\u201d<\/p>\n The installation takes the form of a herbarium. <\/p>\n Its plants \u2014 3D-printed sculptures and graphite botanical drawings \u2014 are invented hybrids of two existing species.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re from my imagination. They\u2019re not real,\u201d AlYaqoub says, explaining that she chose invented species to turn the idea of the \u201calien\u201d back on the classifiers.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so easy to just reclassify something without really understanding its origins or the people that are familiar with it,\u201d she says. \u201cThe colloquial becomes insignificant, and the Western idea of what this flower is becomes more significant. So these plants are alien creatures that defy that classification. It\u2019s like, \u2018Well, if you see me as an alien, then here I am.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n One hybrid pairs a parasitic plant with one capable of cell regeneration. \u201cOne is invasive and one is placid. What would happen if they were married, and what would it look like?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n The hybrids are left unnamed. \u201cIt\u2019s open to interpretation as to who gets to name them now.\u201d<\/p>\n The drawings, she says, also question who gets to produce scientific knowledge. \u201cAnyone can come and decide what the inside of a seed looks like, and it feels like scientific truth. So I\u2019m challenging that by saying: \u2018If I can do these botanical drawings, then anyone can.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The plants sit in raw steel cabinets that AlYaqoub fabricated from scratch to resemble a Victorian archive. The idea came from a visit to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London, where pressed specimens are stored in coded drawers.<\/p>\n \u201cI just felt so sorry for these plants squished in there, in their little sheets,\u201d she says. \u201cIt felt more like a prison than an archive.\u201d In the installation, some of the plants escape. \u201cThey break free from the drawers, they leave the page, and they rebel against the classification system that they\u2019ve been imprisoned in.\u201d<\/p>\n Research drives all of AlYaqoub\u2019s work, which looks at how states, institutions and scientific disciplines build and sustain authority over territory, history and identity.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m always curious about whose story I\u2019m reading, and how much it is really rooted in truth,\u201d she says. Views from above, including maps and satellite imagery, are a recurring theme. \u201cWho\u2019s looking, and how are they looking?\u201d<\/p>\n She often buys material from antique dealers she has befriended on Instagram, such as a \u201cFree Kuwait\u201d lighter that she calls \u201cso significant in terms of its symbology.\u201d She writes an essay on what she has found, then cuts it to 500 words and then to 150, which becomes her artist statement. She then works in threes: text, object and image.<\/p>\n Saudi Arabia has become central to her career (she describes Saudi audiences as \u201cvery eager to learn\u201d), with commissions at Desert X AlUla and in Diriyah before Ithra.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce I had my foot in Saudi Arabia, everything just kept rolling,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I investigate the landscapes in Saudi, they\u2019re not very far from the landscapes of Kuwait. It just feels like a continuation of the land that\u2019s been separated due to nation-building.\u201d<\/p>\n She is now considering extending \u201cFlora Incognita\u201d into a local, colloquial encyclopedia of plant names and has begun meeting botanists and farm owners. She is also researching the Dilmun civilization that once extended into present-day Kuwait. Next, she says, she would like to exhibit at home in Kuwait.<\/p>\n Gaining recognition regionally first matters to her. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be talking about our landscapes and our places and our histories to \u2018them,\u2019 in exile, away from \u2018us,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cI want to talk to us, and then they can hear what we have to say about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/assets.maestronewsroom.com\/media\/30f6532d-717b-4366-9158-9c455299fcd9\/1792645172330-1ac87bef6d29bcab.jpg\")
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