308

9. !bid, p 62. space has become a site of contradiction, where a

10. WLI, op dt. p 1.
lost-and-f<nind game of dislocation and relocation is
11. ibid, pp 106-9.
12. ibid, p 15S. played. The site of relocation will always hear a
13. ibid, p 304, nostalgia for the past, weighed by tlie immediacy of
14. ibid, p 21. a changing present. Born in Wadi Haifa, Sudan, in
15. Maurice Blanchot, 'Museum, Art, and Time' in Friendship. 1954, Ahmed was forced at the age of twelve, after
trans Elizabeth Rottenberg, Stanford University Press,
Stanford, 199"', p 2S.
the construction of the High Dam in Aswan, to
migrate with his family to northern Sudan, in the
1960s. Large areas of Nubia were submerged under
the Nile waters. This meant the washing away not
only of several villages and dwelling places but of a
whole form of living.
De/Limiting Space The trauma of dislocation at an early age turned
Hassan into an unhomely nomad. When the body
Hassan Ali Ahmed loses its external habitation, it fashions an internal
space that would retain the homely. The boy's
memory held enough space to secure images of the
Marie-Therese Abdel-Messih Church of Farras murals, along with Nubian
abstract designs, from drowning. The second dia-
spora came in the late 1970s when the boy who was
to be a Khartoum University graduate in Political
Geographic displacements bring transtormations in Sciences had to escape the torrents of the Numerian
the visuahsation of space. For Hassan Ali Ahmed, regime in Sudan. Refusing to be arrested by a

['iitillcd !. l'-'93-98, mixed nifdi.i on canv;is, SO x 80 cm, IiHcrnatloii.il Shippinj; &

Tr;insportation Company, Cairo, photo Faroiik Abdel-llamid

Image from Hamad El-Neel. 19^6, oil on daiiiour, 12J x 13Ucm. Schernigs, Germany,
photo Farouk Abdel-Hamid
condition of loss or confinement, he has travelled
and exhibited extensively worldwide. At present, he
is stationed in Egypt.
Ahmed needed time to undergo a self-search,
and more space on the canvas to be experienced.
The inquiry into the possibilities of reconstructing
the divided self was considered in terms of pictorial
problems. In most of his interviews Ahmed reiter-
ates that his art is neither an edifying narrative, nor
does it resort to obtrusive political symbolism. His
paintings are as reticent as his ordinary talk. Pres-
ence for him is translatable into an immediate
visualisation not re-presentation; he is not present-
ing what was an afore-fact. It is difficult to give a
literal representation of a culture that has lost its
material existence. The only possibility for its sur-
vival would be in the act of visual expression. Its
objects enter into constant transmutation owing to
their constant displacements and therefore cannot
remain static or conclusive. Paradoxically, such
objects create a place in space through motion. The
mobile figures trace trajectories or create tension.
The colour distribution decides whether the inter-
related elements create balance or unbalance,
whether they form a trajectory or signal layers in
depth.
309
The diasporic experience has urged Ahmed to
create settings that approximate his personal view of
environment. In normal life, activities are determined
by the environmental; in Ahmed's case the dis-
appearance of his native environment urged him to
create an alternative space, holding recognisable
features from the Nubian world in an abstract
structure derived from a self-referential world. In
Nubian, iiki stands for the native land and earth/soil.
The soil provides harvest and building material; it
means open fields and habitat. Skin and walls would
probably provide analogous modes of sheltering in a
Nubian artist's imagination. Ahmed remains fasci-
nated by the Nubian house and shrine designs that
distilled their essence from nature. He is also
impressed by the body-painting designs made by the
tribes living in the mountainous area north of Sudan,
a tradition abandoned after their displacement to
east Sudan. Body paint is not only employed for its
aesthetic value but for ritualistic purposes identifying
the body with natural sources, and distinguishing
different age groups. These designs, by virtue of their
impermanence, are being used by Ahmed to recollect
details of an everyday life that has become mythical,
a lexicon that may be used to reflect on his present
condition.
310
Untitled 2, 1995, ink and acrylic on wood, panels, 6U x 4ULm, Di Zohcjr
Organic beings and inorganic objects have been
inundated with water; the wailing sounds of thou-
sands of beings have vanished into air. On witnessing
such losses, the artist cannot experience air or water
as empty space. There will always be a life still
pulsating under the waves, emerging intermittently,
revealing suppressed anguish. His flat surfaces reveal
ambiguous formations spreading in space, or under
water. The texture may feel like rock, skin/hide, or
metal. In his drawings Ahmed masters the line to
summarize complex movements or textures. In his
paintings the rich texture forms an intricate pattern-
ing that eludes any definite description of its
nature.
There is some mystery evolving from these
ambiguous formations spreading in space. In Unli-
tled, 1993-98, a tissue-like membranous texture
seems to be floating on water. At parts it seems as
solid as rock. At the top, the form shapes into two
heads that bring to our notice a dividing-line running
across, turning the single form into two figures, or
rather a figure and its shadow. The fact that this
painting took five years to complete may give us an
insight as to how the artist has been developing his
technique. From an early stage, tension in his
paintings has been aroused by contrasts between
, SuJ,U), photo Farouk Abdel-Hamid
translucent space and a scabrous surface. Although
surfaces define space by limiting the borders of
infinitude, both interpenetrate. The solid texture is
always softened by dabs of reds, yellows, or white,
translucent areas, an aperture in impenetrable mass,
or a slit in texture.
His respect for the flat surface is not in total
submission to uncommitted brushstrokes. Form
emerges through layers of paint weaving hues and
shapes together. Sometimes he uses oil on watercol-
our to give a wasby glaze. At others he dips a roller
into ink and oil colours, passes it over a foam
board (used for printing textile) to acquire the
scabrous texture when passed on any material
surface, working out a few areas with a sponge,
softening them to appear translucent. The integra-
tion of patches of colour creates an emotive reso-
nance rather than a direct message. His dependence
on colour is to avoid the reductive view produced
by a fixed linearity. The use of tonal variations
creates compositional interrelations that allow for
different ways of viewing. The viewer may visualise
the painting through a normal viewpoint or a
bathtub view.
Abstraction for Ahmed is not reductive. The
surface is either rich in colour and texture, or

Vntitled 3, 2001, oil and print ink on paper, 59 x 50cni, collection of the artist,
Cairo, photo Farouk Abdel-Hamid
divided into a quasi-symmetrical arrangement. In
Image from Hamad El-Neel, 1996, each of the
sections is distinct. The progression from one end
to the other proceeds by parallelism and contrast.
The divisions alternate between dark and light. The
sections that have human figures are layered with
meanings but remain illusionary, and as ambiguous
as the empty spaces. Their immobility checks the
chance motion of the abstract sections. The mem-
ory of Hamad El-Neel, a Sudanese site, is config-
ured as a film-reel with images of a forlorn world
of indefinite existence. The whole plane seems to be
covered by a transparent tissue. The use of human
311
silhouettes that lack solid form spreads them evenly
in tbe spatial fabric. The tissue stretching over is
ambiguous. Its different interpretations across the
different sections show that skin, stone, water, and
light are interchangeable, being woven from the
same source: colour. Colour is the founding element
in all his paintings.
The division of the surface into horizontal or
vertical segments prefigures the appearance of the
diptych, the triptych, or multiple panels placed next
to each other. The panels are distinct but bound by
recurrent elements. Colour combinations are dis-
tributed across the canvas to form an overall
312
compositional structure. In Vntitled 2, 1995, the two
central panels are divided horizontally into subsec-
tions linking both panels by interlocking shapes at
the internal borders. The overlapping shapes do not
coincide. The heavily layered fragmented shapes and
silhouettes that seem protruding are not meant to
create an illusion of foregrounding but to suggest
that the left and right border paintings may admit
further additions. The visual experience may begin
and end at any point. The structure is sensed and not
planned and most of the time it is improvisationai.
The movement of the eye is not deterred by crossing
from one panel to the next but is stimulated to
further movement. The individual panels form
wholes and parts. The endless shifting movement
problematises the flat surface by having it suggest the
cylindrical. The cylindrical is eloquently expressed in
Vntitled 3, 2001. The use of different tones of grey
not only distinguishes upper and lower space but
also balances a rotating motion spurred on by the
penetration of yellow. The rapid brushstrokes sug-
gest a cylindrical form in constant motion. The
shifting viewpoint is replaced in this painting by a
stationary viewpoint from which to see a moving
object. The abstraction here is less quickly under-
stood; it visualises movement in terms of force,
proceeding by accident than by design. In figurative
painting, movement dramatises vital energy in a
narrative context. The abstract representation of
movement here explores the formation/splitting of
entities in space. What preoccupies Ahmed through-
out his painting career is the transitional moment of
existential becoming. The immediacy he seeks to
capture in his paintings translates his shifting per-
spective from his diasporic location. It also chal-
lenges the traditional images that have checked the
freshness of experience. The simultaneous preserving
and cancelling of selected cultural objects stimulate
the viewer to adapt her/his perspective to several
readjustments. The submerged history may then re-
emerge in a contemporary image.
Ahmed's paintings are of a composite quality
negotiating the ethnic and the international. If
abstraction distances the viewer, the choice of the
small scale, the weaving of a rich texture creates
closeness with the paintings. Perhaps the diasporic
condition has rescued Ahmed from being engulfed by
the communal driving force, or stifled by the
hegemony of an international aesthetics. He makes
Western technologies more effective by applying
them to his traditional culture. The traditional is no
longer ossified into a stable condition; instead it has
become subject matter to solve the existential prob-
lem of seeking a self-identity within a local and
global context that denies individuation. As such
Ahmed comments on both the local and the global,
both as insider and outsider.
The Dictatorship of
the Viewer
Some thoughts on the
50th Venice Biennale
Sherman Mern Tat Sam
Certainly the world has changed sharply since the
events in New York of September 11. The Biennale
of 2001 - curated for the second time in succession
by Harald Szeeman - "The Plateau of Humanity',
opened with Joseph Beuys's seminal The End of the
20th Century^ which Francesco Bonami - the current
curator - deemed appropriate for the 'Grand Shows'
of the twentieth century |ie the Biennalcs, Doc-
umentas, Carnegie Internationals). However, for this
particular moment in our new century, it is David
Hammons's Praying to Safety - a pair of Buddhas
with a safety pin suspended on a string between them
- a work of both piety and humour, silliness and
calm - as appropriate for the granola generation as,
Bonami suggests, for a post-Twin Towers world.
Thus, Bonami's curatorial statement, 'Delays and
Revolutions', opens with Hammond's Buddha and
ends with some films by Andy Warhol (Marcel
Duchamp was auditioning at the time of visit), on the
one hand, and Ceal Floyer's blank projection on the
other.' Is Bonami merely stating that, in this time of
big changes and huge uncertainty, small - almost
ephemeral - ideas or works of small subtlety
apply?
Inaugurated in 1895 by the city's Mayor Ric-
cardo Seivatico as the 'International Art Exhibition
of the City of Venice', the idea of the Biennale was to
invite foreign artists to exhibit in the city, thus
making it an 'international' event. Now it has grown
so large that there are 'presidents' for each section:
visual arts, dance, cinema, architecture, and theatre.
Franco Bernarbe, the current and fledgling visual arts
Biennale President, selected Bonami on the grounds
that he wanted a younger, more contemporary
curator - and in this mstance, critic and art
consultant - involved. It appears to be a good match
as both were concerned with moving away from
grand statements and curation that made statements
through artworks. Both curator and president were
also united in their desire for a hiennale that
addresses a more general public. As the second
Biennale of the new millennium, the statement of its
curator would not have to be grander than usual -