April 2024

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Catalogue essay on Hana Al Saadi’s work and studio practice commissioned by Wusum Gallery for her solo show ‘Home Economics’.

SAME SAME BUT NOT DIFFERENT

While much of Hana’s work culminating in her solo exhibition Home Economics evidently seems to be representational, it in many ways is also a presentation of representation whilst simultaneously a representation of presentation. It is precisely in finding the blurred line amidst the play of what it is and what it is not, lies Hana’s practice. This approach presents the state of the subjects of the work, performing a singular static identity, perfectly and endlessly. The body of work in Home Economics investigates the method of producing sameness and seamless uniformity through the very process and method of the production of the works, i.e., creating an industrial system of moulding, casting, and repeating, all in that order. Building upon this inquiry, her studio practice expands to create sameness by applying the same systems traditionally reserved for object-making in the processes of painting, as seen in ‘Dress Code 1, 2, 3 and 4’. Traditionally, the practice of painting is idealised with the unique marks of each brush stroke making an image. In this context, however, the image is fragmented digitally. These fragments are then cut out on cardboard by an industrial laser cutter. The cardboard parts are then dipped in paint and pressed against the canvas, making impressions of the shape of the parts, thus reproducing the image. These ‘paintings’ do not try to conceal the supposedly ‘unpainterly’ process, the shame of being ‘printed’ paintings. Instead, they unapologetically flaunt the residue of the system and the process evident in the texture of the paint surface. Perhaps, much like the subjects of the images, these paintings take pride in the system of sameness production that they are a product of. In ‘Etiquette Class’, there is no system of image production in the process. On the contrary, it is the individual and the impasto style painterly brushstrokes that make the image in the painting. However, the irony rests in the inescapable fact that the subject of the painting is precisely the system of image production.

Very subtly, somewhere between the subjects of the representation, and the representation of the subject, there is an amusing yet audacious play of satire, which also happens to be a central element in Hana’s practice. One must locate and entertain the satire, which requires a certain degree of honesty, in order to attempt to engage with the practice. Honesty is about behaviours and practices that we perform or encounter, as social animals, that are inherent in human nature or through inherited cultures. These are practices that we consciously or unconsciously do or follow, but pretend that we don’t, or hope that everyone else is ignoring it as we are. Ideologies that we are all secretly ashamed of adhering to but fraudulently attribute it to our ignorance, the very blissful ignorance. Ignorance of ignorance.

Everything we do, to either avoid feeling shame or to cause it. Everything we do to evade anything that should cause us pain. Things we hope to get lost and dissipate in the barrage of everyday happenings, which in our times are happening too much. Happenings are happening.

It is much like seeing utterly cringy posts on social media, ones that make us embarrassed even from the virtualness of the screen. We find ourselves doomscrolling endlessly, knowing and hoping that we will not remember seeing it. Hana, however, is the one who will screenshot it and save it, confronting the lowest of human behaviours that are now on full display on social media, sometimes daringly and sometimes with amusement. I know of this somewhat, but would bet that it exists - bookmarks, screenshots folder, and ‘saved posts’ on her phone that have in them her musings on social media. It containshas in it the most absurd and questionable behaviours, which she is bewildered by, and then finds ways to address them. It is imperative to know for anyone who wants to attempt to engage with her practice, that here, to think of rebelling itself is a rebellion. Rebellion is the rebellion.

Part of her practice is to confront the subject matter head-on, not delve into a subject or pretend to understand its complexities. If it does not feel right, then it must not be right. Hana knows, often by experience, what she knows, and what she knows is all that she needs to know to deal with the subject matter. Knowing is the knowing.

While due to the playful nature, it may seem effortless, her artistic inquiry does not resort to conventional means that we know or expect of in works that are supposedly conceptual. In her work, the most obvious element of the subject is present, not a reference, not an analogy, not a metaphor, the subject of the issue is the subject of the work. The subject is the subject. Or at least that is the starting point.

Maybe she will never admit this, but perhaps what Hana wants is for us to trust her with the work. The odd, subtly disturbing and somewhat absurd elements of the work that go beyond simple mockery are often equivalent to, if not exceeding, the bizarre and absurd ideas that they seek to address. In our contemporary condition, we are burdened with often unnecessary information at all times - so many lies, so much deception, so much misrepresentation, so many selfies, and so much dreadful art - that perhaps precisely what we need is a jolt of absurdity. This post-postmodern condition is so dire that, perhaps, in unpopular Zizekian style, the absurdity must happen for the absurdity to be acknowledged. Absurd absurdity.

We must trust Hana that all the strangeness must be there and that the absurdity is necessary because we need it, and perhaps we deserve it. I think of it somewhat like I think of the philosophy of memes. The emergence of memes as one of the greatest, most important and accessible means of communication of our times. From being developed in the degenerate forums of 4chan to being used as legitimate responses by intellectuals in political debates on Twitter (X), the development of memes like most trends is in no way coincidental or arbitrary. It is a response to the postmodern condition. The low quality and early internet kitschy aesthetics layered with poor tasteless references are exactly the mediums that activate the satire, without which they become genuinely bad jokes. So, the genius is the good use of what we collectively recognize as bad aesthetics to make what we now consider good aesthetics. It is only the collective recognition of bad aesthetics that enables the meme, wherein the wrongness is the rightness. In-genuine genuineness. The right wrong.

Much of that is evident in the neo-capitalist and neo-liberal markets rooted in a volatile social media-driven internet culture, where everything that was once considered low-culture is now the high-culture. The hijacking of streetwear by luxury brands, making what was once accessible and affordable clothing now elitist and inaccessible fashion. Bananas taped on walls sold in 4 editions by blue chip galleries to museums. Shiny everyday objects produced in factories breaking contemporary auction records. Good-bad art about bad-good art.

The objective of Hana’s practice is to glorify our subjectivity. Everyone gets to “get it” when engaging with the work. I have noticed over and over again, when one is compelled to make a statement about the work, she is in absolute agreement with them as though that was in fact the point of the work. Hana is definitely thinking and making, yet she will make it seem like she was not thinking - you, the viewer, were the one thinking and somehow the work manifested in her studio. There are just enough recognisable references present that allow the work to be seen and read in multiple ways, and the more far-fetched the reading, the better it is for her. The farther we go in reading the work, the hollower it gets, and perhaps, sometimes that is what she is looking for the work to do. One does not have to pretend to get the work, the work happens when we are pretending to get it.

If I had to sum up Hana’s practice in one anecdote, it is definitely this - in response to an assignment about artist statements in her senior year as an art student, she wrote “My professor asked me to write an artist statement, so here it is. I do not think I should write an artist statement, but I am writing it now to fulfill class requirements.”, and that became her artist statement and appeared in the senior thesis catalogue.

Ayaz Rauf