The moon upon its fourteenth night
This sculpture was conceived as part of To Be Continued: Troubling the Queer Archive, an exhibition set to open September 19th in a semi-virtual form at Carleton University Art Gallery in Ottawa, Canada. The show, curated by Anna Shah Hoque and Cara Tierney, examines queer BIPOC histories, and so my premise was to create this life-sized, figurative archive of LGBTQ identities in Middle Eastern history.
I used the visual reference to henna, a very interpersonal, bodily practice, to make a conductive surface out of copper tape and conductive pigments, which works as an antenna for a capacitive sensor, which, in turn, controls the volume of the audio that emits from the speaker in the mouth. The audio tells the story of Qamar-al-Zaman and Princess Budour from the 1001 Nights. With records dating back to the 14th century Middle East , it tells a fun, raunchy story of gender-bending and same-sex desire, as well as misunderstandings, adventure, and mischievous Jinn. It challenges the way gender norms in Muslim history are understood, and to hear it, you need to get very physically close to the sculpture, generating a kind of intimacy with your body’s electric capacitance and its androgynous form and many limbs.
While it was initially conceived as a directly touchable artwork, it was re-thought a bit due to the pandemic, with distance- instead of touch-sensing to perform the same functions without, y’know, risking viewer’s lives.
To historically preserve the archive, I created a perma.cc link with the project audio, schematic, and various forms of documentation, all of which can be accessed through the QR code on the figure’s belly.
In my mind, this figure is a sort of time traveller, sent from a future in which gender and sexual identity is freely determined, sent back in time to tell us of a part of our history which we’ve forgotten. This is part of why it’s covered in crystals: used for timekeeping, I think of its body and our bodies as historical archives in their own right, accessed though intimacy, connection, and the intrinsic capacitance they create.
Planning
I started off by making a 3d model to use as a reference/ sketch.
Which I then “sliced” into 1″ flat sections, and printed their outlines on paper.
Sculpting
I cut out all the pieces from Foamular XPS (basically just pink insulation foam), glued them together, and used weights and tape to keep them in place.
I then started roughly shaping the foam, mostly with a serrated kitchen knife.
Further shaping of the anatomy, now using a file, ~40 grit sandpaper, and the serrated knife.
At this point I used the Hot Wire Foam Factory’s ‘Create Coat’ product to seal the foam and smooth it somewhat
I decided I wanted it smoothed and built up further, so I used a polymer-modified, smooth concrete on top of the Create Coat.
Finishing the concrete coat, sanding, smoothing.
I decided at this point that I didn’t like the face, so I did some digital remodelling using Blender.
Based (roughly) on the 3D model, I made a version of the new face out of cheap, home-made ‘clay’
Then I made a mold of the new face, cast it in concrete, and put it in place of the old face.
This then took a bit of smoothing to get it looking right.
(At this point I realized I should start thinking about what the weird crystal protrusions would look like…)
(But I wouldn’t be attaching the crystals until near the end, so back to the sculpture!)
Now that the cement has created a barrier from the (very solvent-sensitive) foam base, I coated it with “Rondo”, a mixture of fiberglass and Bondo.
I also started modeling the fingers out of a combination of 1-part silicone, starch, and pigment.
Once it was fully coated, I gave it several solid coats of primer.
(It’s hard to tell in the photos, but those silicone fingers are bendy and soft!
Refining details + initial paint coat.
Oh, I also removed one of the arms early on so I could take it home and figure out the electronics stuff on it.
Sculpture is basically just a lot of building stuff up, then sanding it down, then building it up, then sanding it down…
Adding some initial paint layers to further define the face.
Starting to paint and shade the body. The actual sculpting of the figure is mostly done at this point!
Electronics
This part took a lot of experimentation. The general idea was that I wanted the conductive copper on the arm to function as an antenna for the capacitive sensor, which would translate a person’s distance into audio volume.
This is the basic schematic I ended up settling on. I used the Teensy 3.6’s hardware-based TouchSense library to read the values coming in from the distance sensor, which were then fed into an Audio Shield attached to the Teensy to control the volume, which was sent to the speaker in the mouth. Oh, and there’s an amp and a decoupling filter in there too.
More sculpture...
Re-attached the right front arm, and added copper tape to the left front arm.
Carving out space in the back of the neck for the electronics.
Putting the electronics in place in a clear plexiglass box I made. Finally!
Modeling the crystals with cardboard (and you can see the speaker in place in the mouth here)
Filled the crystals with expanding foam, then coated them in pigmented fiberglass.
(Some of the crystals are actually cast in resin, too, like the ones around the right eye)
Adding translucent layers of paint to further integrate the crystals, electronics, and body.
Lots and lots of gradual painting and refining…
Put a lil’ QR code on the tum using an acrylic transfer, and that’s basically it!
And here it is, installed at the gallery!
we only liberate ourselves by binding our liberations to those of one another
“How can public art work with, against and beyond the monumental? How can it scale up to address the monumentality of environmental extraction, the long reverberations of colonial violence, or the depths of ideological entrenchments?
Pansee Atta explores these questions in her video projection we only liberate ourselves by binding our liberations to those of one another, which visualizes the counter-monumental as an intervention upon a practice that has directly shaped local histories, politics and geographies in the National Capital Region: the containment of water – a legacy manifested most prominently in the Rideau Canal and Chaudière Falls.
Understanding containment of bodies – of water and persons – to be a foundational ordering logic of colonial expansion, Atta uses her video projection to create a space of excess, setting in motion a counter-flow of uncontainable, surging corporeality. Streams of animated bodies, ungovernable in their form and function, reject atomization to operate as a fundamentally interdependent swarm of subjectivities. Assembling perpetually, they scale up a rocky natural facade of Victoria Island, seemingly emerging out of the watery depths and interacting with the contours of their environment.
Rather than creating a discrete, contained video with a fixed duration, Atta’s compositional strategy is itself an uncontainable system, operating on a continuously running animation script that randomly generates streams of monstrous figures, each mutually aiding one another as they scale the height of the frame. As such, Atta’s work may be viewed indefinitely without encountering a single repetition – a formal irreducibility that exceeds the structural rigor of containment and its relations of enclosure. This is an unruly radiance, bound together by allyship, and borne of a shared struggle.”
Home/Making at the Art Bank
I Am Not Asking For the Moon
“I am not asking for the moon,” 2018. 5 3D-printed thermoplastic polymer and resin sculptures, approx. 30 x 30 x 30 cm. Accompanied by looping GIF animations.
For more information on this project, check out the installation shots and write-up by the brilliant Julie Hollenbach at the MSVU website here.
The Bust of Nefertiti
The Statue of Great Pyramid Architect Hem-iunu
Bust of Prince Ankhhaf
The Dendera Zodiac
The Rosetta Stone
Projections
PROJECTIONS
In cartography, a projection is a transformation of the three-dimensional shape of the planet onto a two-dimensional surface. Mapped projections, by definition, distort the surface to some extent: some of the most accurate projections are less legible due to the lines of division and intersection, whereas some of the most recognizable projections (such as the Mercator projection) distort large portions of the globe by shrinking equatorial regions in comparison to northern landmasses. In psychological terms, projection refers to the impulse to see aspects of oneself — accurately or inaccurately — in others.
In cartography, a projection is a transformation of the three-dimensional shape of the planet onto a two-dimensional surface. Mapped projections, by definition, distort the surface to some extent: some of the most accurate projections are less legible due to the lines of division and intersection, whereas some of the most recognizable projections (such as the Mercator projection) distort large portions of the globe by shrinking equatorial regions in comparison to northern landmasses. In psychological terms, projection refers to the impulse to see aspects of oneself — accurately or inaccurately — in others.
Between these two definitions of projection lay fertile grounds for considering the land through the lens of both the affective and the political. It underscores the impact of the epistemic violence of misrepresentation: the map becomes a way of understanding the non-Western world and racialized bodies, so that the ‘distorted’ map imposes just as real a set of political restrictions as the ‘accurate’ one.
As a point of departure, this project seeks to ask: How do racialized bodies navigate both geographic and social space? How are bodies codified as ‘excessive’ through normative conceptualizations of space and geography? And how is belonging asserted and denied through interactions with the land and its signifiers? By intervening upon images of the map, the border, and the earth, this project seeks to visualize the tension between belonging and rejection, expressing the effects of that tension through the use of animated images that cycle indefinitely and interact variously with the surfaces upon which they are projected. Dislocation — physical, social, and psychic — is made manifest in its different forms through animated work that is tactile and visceral despite its intangibility.
As a point of departure, this project seeks to ask: How do racialized bodies navigate both geographic and social space? How are bodies codified as ‘excessive’ through normative conceptualizations of space and geography? And how is belonging asserted and denied through interactions with the land and its signifiers? By intervening upon images of the map, the border, and the earth, this project seeks to visualize the tension between belonging and rejection, expressing the effects of that tension through the use of animated images that cycle indefinitely and interact variously with the surfaces upon which they are projected. Dislocation — physical, social, and psychic — is made manifest in its different forms through animated work that is tactile and visceral despite its intangibility.
Funding:
I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the City of Ottawa, without which this project would not have been possible!
I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the City of Ottawa, without which this project would not have been possible!
Work in progress (Undocumented: Pair of Shoes)
Pair of Shoes, Acrylic on paper, 22″x 27″
UNDOCUMENTED in (Chinatown) Remixed
UNDOCUMENTED is a series of paintings of specific artifacts from the Victoria & Albert Museum collections, more specifically, objects whose records and provenance documentation are missing or incomplete. Displaced from various places of origin, these objects have been re-organized in Western institutions in ill-fitting categories without social & historical context. UNDOCUMENTED stylistically references the miniature painting traditions of the Middle East and South Asia to elevate and re-situate these artifacts in contemporary social contexts outside the museum.
The specific information that is lost or erased from museum records is relevant, too: it is rare for the makers of typically gendered forms of production (such as pottery or embroidery) to be remembered, so the ‘Maker: Unknown’ field becomes a memorial of sorts to under-recognized art forms and all their unrecognized creators.
These paintings are currently being shown in Shiraz Food Market as part of (Chinatown) Remixed, an annual Ottawa art festival that places local artists’ work in community spaces. Shiraz is a particularly rich site of meaning for these de-contextualized and re-contextualized objects. Among the tea, dates, and nuts, they become again what they were once meant to be: objects that enact spirituality through their use and creation, objects that enable meditative creation through practiced forms of making.
These paintings will be shown until October 16th (at the earliest) Shiraz Grocery is at 725 Somerset street W.
Work in Progress
Working Through the Aftereffects of Sykes Picot Balfour Et. Al
(a work in progress, appropriately enough)
New Project- Earthenware
Created in conjunction with the Montreal Museum of Fine Art. Sneak peek here.
‘Earthenware’ is a a series of six short animations, each of which is inspired by a specific object in the Montreal Museum of Fine Art’s collections and archives. This project, as with much of my previous work, considers questions of collection and colonization, ‘High Art’ versus ‘craft’, and the links between the objects and the places in which they are produced. The animations are shown in three pairs: in each pair, one is based on an object from the European collections, and one from the Muslim world (primarily from Egypt, my own place of national origin).
Stills:
