{"id":52826,"date":"2025-02-13T05:02:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T05:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/saudi-spanish-artist-hana-maatouk-discusses-her-debut-solo-show-worlds-within\/"},"modified":"2025-02-13T05:02:00","modified_gmt":"2025-02-13T05:02:00","slug":"saudi-spanish-artist-hana-maatouk-discusses-her-debut-solo-show-worlds-within","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=52826","title":{"rendered":"Saudi-Spanish artist Hana Maatouk discusses her debut solo show \u2018Worlds Within\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tRIYADH: Saudi-Spanish artist Hana Maatouk loves giving gifts. As a child, she presented each member of her family with a comic, abstract doodle that she felt embodied them. \u201cI would narrate my feelings or my response to an event through images,\u201d she tells Arab News.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tNow, her work has drawn crowds in New York to her first solo show, the conclusion of a four-month residency with downtown art space Chinatown Soup.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThrough her work, Maatouk explores Saudi Arabia\u2019s evolving socio-political landscape and her personal memories of growing up there. In that solo exhibition, \u201cWorlds Within,\u201d which took place at NYC Culture Club last month, Maatouk used memory not as the main narrative, but as a way to examine the present.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Memory from Omra,” 2022. (Supplied)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cInitially, I thought I was going to archive my personal memory and make fantastical images based on my personal narrative. But when I started, I realized that my fascination with memory actually goes beyond myself,\u201d she said.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWorlds Within\u201d was part of \u201cWithin Reach\u201d \u2014 a show encompassing a number of exhibitions celebrating the 2024 class of undergraduate visual arts students from Columbia University, where Maatouk studied, and Barnard College. Maatouk\u2019s vibrant, surrealist work was heavily inspired by the 12th-century Andalusian mystic Ibn Arabi and his philosophical concept of divine time and space.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tDuring her residency at Chinatown Soup, Maatouk intended to create a picture for every significant memory she has, even if it was just a quick sketch. And what she realized in the process was that her relationship to memory is very much rooted in emotions and images rather than language.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The Rocks Are Witness,” 2024. (Supplied)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
\n\tShe came into her residency with the work she had created for her thesis, in which the predominant color was a bold red. Her later works slowly developed out of that, and even referenced the doodles she had made as a child.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tOne piece, a drawing in charcoal, is a depiction of her memory of Umrah, which she performed with her father and brother when she was around 12 years old. There are no photographs of their trip, so the painting was purely based on her memory. \u201cI still recall the feeling of the white tile beneath my feet. Our pace. My eyes observing, witnessing,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I showed that picture to my brother, he was like, \u2018Yeah, that\u2019s how I felt it as well.\u2019\u201d\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThis piece became \u201csignificant in the development of my visual language,\u201d she adds, \u201cbecause of the fleeting figures. If you look towards the top and the peripheries, the \u2018figure\u2019 turns into a simple arc, which becomes a unit on its own. Visually, I reduced the information down to the most basic cell that could still represent a figure but also carry many meanings in its abstraction.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tIn her discussions with others about her work, a recurring theme was just how unreliable memories can be. This led the artist to explore other questions, such as why we define memory based on what it is not.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s almost like we\u2019ve pitted memory against fact and made it unreliable in its definition. But what if its power is that it can transcend time and space \u2014 that it exists, actually, outside of those two things? It incorporates those two things. But it exists beyond them. It\u2019s timeless,\u201d she says.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hana Maatouk. (Supplied)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile the show consists mainly of paintings, Maatouk has trained in many mediums, including sculpture, installation, printmaking, and photography. \u201cI don\u2019t have one particular medium that is \u2018it\u2019 forever, I think it\u2019s just a matter of what language fits the idea that I\u2019m working with,\u201d she says.\u202f\u201cWith painting, most recently, I\u2019ve been dabbling with the fantastical, the fictional, and the mythological, because painting, in its essence, is an illusion. You\u2019re making three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional plane. It already has elements of the fantastical embedded in it. So, when I was writing these narratives about the changes I was observing in Saudi Arabia, it made sense to do it in painting.\u201d\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tAs the daughter of a Saudi father and Spanish mother, Maatouk says there are aspects of her cultural background, history, and perspective that she\u2019s eager to translate through her work. The challenge is taking these elements outside of their cultural realm to new audiences.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cMy audience (for the latest exhibition was) a New York audience, and actually, at the opening, my friend Sarah, who\u2019s American, brought a friend to the show, and I asked her which piece resonated, and she pointed to the one of Umrah,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWhat makes a good work for me\u2026 I think about it in terms of an emotional transfer. I love to see the work resonating with people in an emotional way, where they feel like something in them was seen in the work.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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