Some art lovers wandering the booths and galleries of this year’s Biennale may be hard pressed to identify this year’s theme among the many works on display.
The officially designated theme of “the other appears a little lost amid the clutter of sculpture, video, painting and installation. Where it is present, it is often only visible to the keenest of observers, willing to strain a brain cell or two in the effort.
However, a few of the works on display at the Opera House have come up with the goods in a suitably accessible way, with video and photographic art in particular demonstrating their power to convey potentially slippery concepts.
Lebanese photographer Khaled D. Ramadan was given a Biennale Award this year for a photographic slideshow plotting his real-life journey from photographic subject to professional snapper.
The pre-recorded commentary tells of Ramadan’s first encounter with photography, having his picture taken by French soldiers as a child in Beirut. Now aged 38, Ramadan has become well accustomed to living on the other side of the lens, and has specialized in images of the Middle East.
“Having a camera in your hands makes you popular, powerful and at the center of events, says Ramadan.
But the inevitable consequence of his profession, he continues, is the tendency to reproduce the Orientalist stereotypes inherited from the imperialist West. Not long ago, he confesses, his wife told him that he had become just like a French tourist on holiday.
“How does one practice the lens without becoming Orientalist? Frankly, I don’t know the answer, he concludes.
Viewers of Ramadan’s images might not think them particularly stereotypical, much less Orientalist. And yet there is no refuting his claim that the subjects of his photography have no control over the way in which their image will be used, explained or interpreted.
A few booths down at the Opera House, video artist Ali Assef has made use of the theme of otherness to explain the ongoing violence in Iraq. In his work, a man and woman are seen standing side-by-side, holding banners on which are written the statements “I am him and “I am her.
The statements change every few seconds, the genders being replaced with the names of ethnic and religious groups. Hence, “Turkoman stands beside “Assyrian, “Sunni besides “Bahai. All the while, a series of real-life video images plays in the background, showing car and truck bombs exploding in Iraq. The message of the dangers of self-versus-other is clear.
Joining the conceptual fray are two British artists, Richard Duebel and Sylvia Smith, with a work combining separate displays of video and photography.
Rather than attempting to either avoid or condemn Orientalism, their work presents an updated Western perspective on the Orient, under the suitably catchy title “New Orientalism – a term that they may well have coined themselves.
The video portion shows a performance of the night-time “Gnawa ritual, a traditional Moroccan mystical musical ceremony. Around the musicians is a gaggle of Western tourists hoping to glimpse some spiritual goings-on amid the hypnotic rhythms.
“The view of the Arab world that is held in the West, and which still now exists, is that which was created during the 19th Century by the Orientalists, said Duebal. “For example, David Roberts, the painter, who loved to show turbaned men laying around in ruined temples, smoking shishas with a camel tethered in the background.
“Now, extraordinary though it might seem, that view still prevails in Europe and America today. But the Arab world isn’t quite like that, he continues.
“A man may dress in the same garb that his ancestors dressed in, but that doesn’t mean to say that he’s got a camel outside. He’s probably got a 4×4 and he owns an iPod.
Accompanying the video is a series of photographic portraits of Arab people, all digitally re-colored in bright tones reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s poster art. They are annotated with comments intended to undermine stereotypes – and humorously so. One old man, for example, is wearing traditional dress but asking through a speech bubble: “Where’s my iPod?
“The pictures are also stereotypes in a sense, but they’re far more modern and accurate stereotypes than those created by the Orientalists of the 19th Century, says Duebel.
Smith and Duebel are television journalists by trade, and veterans of the Middle East and North Africa. As such, they are well acquainted with the tendency to romanticize such locations, considered exotic from an English viewpoint.
However, Duebel points out that Western people are equally subject to stereotyping, and none more so than the English themselves.
“Of course, we English all drink tea and play cricket, don’t we? And we wear Panama hats, he says with a smile.
