2022
Charcoal, acrylic and graphite on canvas, (3m x 7m), 5 editions,
commissioned by 421, and supported by Shaikha Salama Bint Hamdan Emerging Artist Fellowship (SEAF), Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Exhibited at On Foraging, 421 (2022), Way of the Forest, Colomboscope (2024).
The following year, I was commissioned to produce a new iteration of the work, and I requested that the work be produced in my homeland in Jordan. At the time, I was hardly balancing time between my artistic practice, rest and my full-time job. The latter had fully occupied my life. In allowing a commission which included my travel home, and a mandated activity of sitting under a tree to create the work- I found this to be deeply ironic. Experiencing the lull of a sunny afternoon was a luxury and a privilege.
While we see encounters in nature as this intentional experience, where often a trip would need to be planned, I spent a profound 40 minutes under my grandmother’s sour plum tree, a tree that was around 60 years old, in my family garden. I would place a rolled canvas under the tree, quickly mark the shadows with charcoal, and then pull the canvas and repeat the process all over again. The result is a shadow drawing of the tree and the sun dancing across the canvas, changing minute to minute.
The 40 minutes of this afternoon, and the overwhelming reality of needing to buy time, or work, to have such an encounter pushed me to make the decision to return to my homeland after spending a decade away. As cycles of life invite beginnings and endings, in April 2024, the roots of a pine tree caused the wall of my family home to collapse, completely destroying the tree.
These works shift in their meaning, they are no longer fleeting gestures, but portraits that now outlive the tree.
PROCESS