Living Room (2021)
Armchair with screen printed seat cover, side tables, a cup of tea, lamp, rotary telephone, photo albums with photograph and paintings, Posca pen on dinner plates, acrylic on rubber sandals, air-dry clay, sound, smell
Monuments (2017)
mixed media drawings on paper and gold framepen drawings on handmand sketchbooks
Since 2013 I have been collecting and making images of rocks and pieces of coral in various mediums. The texture and aesthetics of these porous yet solid objects appeal to me. Rocks and corals invoke a sense of stability and grounding - a symbol of home. Yet, rocks and corals are fragile and at the mercy of time, natural elements and human intervention. Two bodies of work are presented in this exhibition: Monuments (2017) and Living Room (2021)
Monuments (2017)
The purpose of a monument is to celebrate or preserve a part of our history, to commemorate the dead and gone, to hold on to an aspect of our narrative. The Monument (2017) is a series of ‘coral portraits’. It was created to pay homage to a coastal park in my home city Male’ much loved by many of its residents that was destroyed for a massive infrastructure project. Each of the ‘portraits’ depicts a piece of weathered coral collected from that site before it’s destruction.
Living Room (2021)
While the Monument is a mourning for a loss of public space I once enjoyed, the installation Living Room presents a personal and internal space, and was created specially for this exhibition. It references objects from the living rooms of my childhood homes that were the vessels that carried our memories, stories and relations with friends, family and community. Thinking back to those homes that we lived so long ago from this far-away time and place fills me with a strange mix of nostalgia and alone-ness.
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This installation was part of Here, There, Nowhere exhibition at Blak Dot Gallery, Melbourne 15 April to 2 May 2021 (view online)
All photos by Hani Amir