Young Emirati artist Afra Bin Dhaher’s solo exhibition at Tashkeel, “Hymns to a Sleeper”, features a series of photographic works that depict everyday objects such as chairs, carpets, shoes and potted plants in unusual settings. The images are populated by enigmatic figures of masked women and a colourful parrot. Pink pastel backdrops, fabrics with cotton candy patterns and empty interior spaces enhance the surreal feel of her carefully constructed scenarios.
Each work is presented with an intriguing caption that seems to be a dialogue from a play with names of characters and stage directions. The mystical figures and captions conceal as much as they reveal, inviting viewers to project their own stories on to the ephemeral and intangible moments captured in the images.
Dhaher is the first artist to be selected for Tashkeel’s Critical Practice Programme, initiated in 2014. She has been working with her mentor — performance artist, writer and educator Andrew Starner — for a year to develop this body of work for the programme’s first exhibition.
“The thought-provoking readings and discussions with my mentor helped me to improve and refine my work conceptually. The idea behind this show was to explore how meaning is created in an image through the documentation of our daily encounters with objects or scenarios — be they dreams, conversations, moments or memories.
“This ‘production’ is a result of the unconsciousness and consciousness of an individual showcasing how a medium used for archiving could be used as a way to either remember or not remember. The props I have chosen are all from my immediate surroundings, including the parrot, which belongs to a member of my family. They are objects that hold a certain value, related to a specific moment that I would like to capture; and sometimes they help to create the feeling I want the image to have. All these objects speak of a place, or time or people in a new dimension. And to me the images are like hymns revealed by the subconscious of my subjects,” Dhaher says.
The strange figures in her images often wear a mask of their own face. Explaining this signature touch, Dhaher says, “In a photography class during my sophomore year we were asked to create a self-portrait. I was not comfortable being my own sitter, but I wanted to fully exploit the genre, so I decided to mask my subject with her own face. The mask seemed to reveal and conceal the subject in a controlled yet uncontrolled manner; and turning away the gaze of the subject added another layer to the image giving the feeling that she is stuck between a continuous and frozen time. I have been using a masked figure in profile in my work since then.”
Jyoti Kalsi is an arts enthusiast based in Dubai.
“Hymns to a Sleeper” will run at Tashkeel until March 3.
