132 133 Look And You Shall Find Jananne al-ani 134 photography tracking down the hidden history of the Middle east and of iraq, the land in which she spent her childhood, is something of a creative quest for iraqi/ irish artist Jananne al-ani. Myrna Ayad meets her at her london studio to discuss the semiotics of disappearance and appearance, and what it is that drives al-ani to dig deep beneath the surface. T he bright london sun peeks between the trees facing Jananne al-ani’s studio and bleaches the walls. every- thing is washed-out, except for the displayed maps of the arab world. “i’m going to do something with my irish heritage because i’m tired of curators describing me as a ‘Middle eastern’ artist!” she grins, and the seemingly silent illumination is interrupted by her laugh, which has a hearty timbre. her head swings back, her dark hair with it, and a shaft of light catches her piercing eyes – variations of green, grey and blue. “i don’t like being called [just] a feminist artist, a Middle eastern artist or a woman artist, because i am all of those things and being just one of them is not enough,” she says, “it would be like throwing my art education away!” having been born in Kirkuk, iraq to an iraqi father and an irish mother doesn’t make al-ani just an iraqi artist either. “Well, how can i be?” she asks, “how can i stand up and call myself an iraqi artist when the reality of life for artists who have continued to live and work in iraq is so extreme in comparison to mine?” it is not these particular questions of identity which concern al-ani, but rather how her art can be used as a process of enlightenment with regard to politics, geography, history and gender issues. Opening spread: The Aesthetics of Disappearance: A Land Without People (work in progress). 2010. Production still. Variable dimensions. Photography by Adrian Warren. Courtesy the artist. 135 photography From the series Landscapes. Cemetery (Grounded Iraqi Airways Planes) . 2008. C-Type. 11 x 17 cm. Courtesy the artist. “I don’t like being called [just] a feminist artist, a Middle Eastern artist or a woman artist because I am all of those things and being just one of them is not enough.” 136 The Aesthetics of Disappearance: A Land Without People (work in progress). 2010. Production stills. Variable dimensions. Photography by Adrian Warren. Courtesy the artist. tthe Butterfly effect as we sip coffee, al-ani discusses her latest film and photographic project The Aesthetics of Dis- appearance: A Land Without People , the first part of which will be showcased in her forthcoming solo show at amman’s Darat al-funun on 18 May. the new work continues certain preoccu- pations apparent in al-ani’s 1991 Untitled (Gulf War Series) , comprising 20 small, black-and-white photographs that are her way of offering an ‘al- ternative’ narrative of iraq’s history. She had felt that the Western media did not present an all- encompassing, all-inclusive reportage or view of iraq, almost as though the country was void of history and with no future prospects. “Britain’s got amazing art historians and scholars in the fields of oriental and arab history, but the general population is by and large unaware of iraq’s his- tory,” she says. “Some couldn’t tell the difference between iran and iraq! the perception was lim- ited to camels, Sinbad, ali Baba and flying carpets, and only recently, Kirkuk’s been on the news and it’s like, finally, the place i was born in is getting some recognition, none of it is positive though!” al-ani became intrigued with french cultural theorist paul Virilio’s longstanding interest in the use of cinematic techniques in military conflicts of the 20th century. in his landmark 1980 essay, The Aesthetics of Disappearance , Virilio recounts how film pioneer georges Méliès accidentally discovered how to ‘disappear’ the subjects he was filming when his camera jammed unexpectedly. al-ani, however, was concerned with the “narra- tives of disappearance in the Middle east and, of course, in iraq”; basically, how bodies are disposed of following mass genocides and wars. “after the fall of Saddam hussein, the armenian genocide, the disappearance of palestinian villages and the many wars in lebanon, how were people able to come to terms with the ‘disappeared’?” she asks. essentially, her curiosity was drawn towards what lurks beneath the Middle east’s vast land- scapes, rolling hills, fertile fields and wide open plains. aesthetically beautiful as they are, ‘six feet under’ the terrain are historical warzones of un- accounted for, unknown and unearthed civilians. how many stories can these lands narrate? and just how much can their beauty deceive? al-ani then stumbled on an article on forensic anthropol- ogist and ‘butterfly hunter’ Margaret cox. in 1999, a significant number of the wildflower Artemisia vulgaris, also known as mugwort, flourished in the Balkans, attracting clouds of blue butterflies. the dead had changed the soil’s nutrient levels, which encouraged the growth of mugwort and thereby allowed the butterflies to lead cox to the mass graves. ironically, in ancient times, mugwort was used to ward off evil spirits to travellers. remarka- bly, cox has also uncovered 300,000 bodies killed under hussein’s rule in hilla and Musayyib in iraq. “it starts off like a walk through the country,” says al-ani, “everything is so beautiful on the surface photography “Britain’s got amazing art historians and scholars in the fields of Oriental and Arab history, but the general population is by and large unaware of Iraq’s history.” 139 Facing page: Untitled l & ll. 1996. Silver gelatin prints. 120 x 180 cm each. Courtesy the artist. Above: Untitled (Gulf War Series) 1991. Silver gelatin prints. 16 x 16 cm each. Courtesy the artist. 140 but how horrible things are underneath.” i recall lebanese ‘contemporary historian’ akram Zaatari ( Canvas 6.1) and his recent book and exhibition, Earth of Endless Secrets , which as Zaatari explained, “the earth has many secrets that need to be de- ported.” it is interesting to consider how these two artists from the Middle east have brought the horrors of the region’s past into mainstream contemporary art. and in picturesque form, too. al-ani flew to the uSa to research photo- graphic archives and found, among others, re- connaissance images of first World War trenches taken by the american air force and which “look like beautiful abstract images”. She took hundreds of aerial and ground shots of american and Mid- dle eastern deserts – it is impossible to identify the locations, and that is precisely her intention. She hopes to incorporate firsthand accounts by people who have survived and witnessed geno- cides and wars into the work, including victims of the 9/11 tragedy. “i don’t want to attribute the quotes to a particular person or event, it’s like one narrative,” says al-ani, echoing Zaatari: “the war in lebanon or the Middle east is something that can be talked about as a universal experience.” the BottoMleSS WellS of MeMory in much the same way, al-ani’s intention for 1001 Nights (1998) was to use storytelling as a route to explore memory. increasingly popular among the region’s contemporary artists is the use of video as a modern-day successor to the traditional form of arabian storytelling. “it was working with pho- tography that led to film and video,” she explains, “there was something about the stillness of pho- tographs that i wanted to preserve while intro- ducing the elements of time and narrative.” al-ani, her mother and three sisters have featured prom- inently in her body of work over the years. “yes, they are a recurring motif,” she says of her family, “you see them changing over time.” in 1001 Nights , al-ani asked her cast to each articulate a recurring dream which takes place in iraq. “i am trying to interrogate memory,” she says. interestingly, there were numerous crossovers in each woman’s narra- tion – they all talked about the war, or as al-ani puts it, “essentially, they were talking about their fears.” al-ani’s memories of her 13 years in iraq are positive. “people think growing up in iraq meant it was a difficult childhood; there were constraints of course, but we a wonderful childhood,” she says. it is those years and their repercussions in politics, media, memory and perceptions that continue to inform al-ani’s work. Switching off lights, closing curtains, painting car headlights, hosting cousins in army fatigues, being told not to speak english at checkpoints or say anything about hussein and “watching the ‘bogeyman’ caught on hazy tV footage” must have seemed like an extended, elaborate game for al-ani. But in reality and in recollection, she now knows that these were indicators of “some- thing big about to happen”. and it is precisely this memory probe into perceptions of then and now that really defines her oeuvre . “i’m not surprised that a lot of artists from the region work with documentary, archiving and the way in which history is constructed,” she says. her parents had met in the uK when her fa- ther, “part of the first wave of iraqis to study in the uK” was pursuing his degree in engineering. the couple moved to Kirkuk where al-ani’s father worked for the iraqi petroleum company. She recalls memories of summers by the pool, long, hot drives to and from Kirkuk and Baghdad and evenings when “all the adults would sit in a cir- cle talking all night and the many cousins would run around.” Just prior to the onset of the iran-iraq war, al-ani moved to the uK with her mother and sisters, settling in cambridge in 1980. “i remember wanting to be an astronaut, then a ballerina and then a brain surgeon,” laughs al-ani, “but i had al- ways wanted to be an artist.” She initially trained as a painter at the Byam Shaw School of art, graduating with a fine art Diploma in 1989. “it ran a very traditional, conservative studio system on one hand, but had a radical complementary stud- ies programme run by robin Klassnik [director of Matt’s gallery] on the other,” she says. al-ani strug- gled at Byam Shaw, asked too many questions and was far more interested in ideas than in doing much actual work. “i probably stuck with painting longer than i should have, but i was insistent that painting could be done in a way that had a politi- cal subtext and could discuss ideas apart from be- ing decorative or narrative.” By then, she had taken up photography, attended workshops and even began photographing her mother and sisters. photography “It was working with photography that led to film and video. There was something about the stillness of photographs that I wanted to preserve while introducing the elements of time and narrative.” 141 looKing at Me looKing at you By the mid 1990s, she was exhibiting her work regularly and went on to complete an Ma in photography from the royal college of art in 1997. it was during her Ma that she came across Malek alloula’s book, The Colonial Harem , which investigates postcards of algerian women made during french colonisation. al-ani became fas- cinated with the Western perception of the ori- ent, especially as many orientalist painters and photographers had never visited the region and relied solely on fantasy and imagination. She was interested in the Western focus on the image of the ‘oriental’ woman and the particular fascina- tion with the veil. “the veil is such a confronta- tional object to the Western viewer, so much can be misinterpreted and it’s surrounded by clichés,” she says, “the veil is either seen as op- pressive and representative of sexual and politi- cal disenfranchisement or it is a sexualised and eroticised object. it is a symbol of the denial of the coloniser’s right to look. it blocks that right, and therefore places the veiled woman in a privileged position: she can see you, but you can’t see her.” What resulted was a body of work which continued al-ani’s exploration into “the politics of looking” while examining the Western fascina- tion with the veil. in Untitled I & II (1996), al-ani’s charged large scale black and white photographs, five women (her family and herself ) in various stages of veiling, gaze back at the audience. the women confront the viewer in a gradual veiling, or unveiling, of the face, depending on whether you read the picture from left to right, as with english script, or from right to left, as in arabic. al-ani’s Un- titled I won the John Kobal photographic portrait award in 1996; a photographic diptych was sold at the october 2008 Dubai christie’s auction for $60,000 and editions of this work are in the collec- tions of the V&a in london and the Smithsonian institution in Washington Dc. “it’s the first work that got any attention in the arab world,” says al- ani and like much of her subsequent output, it forces its audience to reflect on the act of seeing and to wonder: just who is looking at whom? Jananne Al-Ani’s solo exhibition at Darat Al- Funun runs from 18 May−22 July. For more information visit www.daratalfunun.org Untitled. 2002. Single channel video projection. Variable dimensions. Courtesy the artist. Eros dui in libero, nec tristique non est maecenas, felis duis dolor sem, lobortis id fusce integer scelerisque felis enim. Etiam ullamcorper vestibulum ridiculus ac morbi nunc.