Visual Artist Alymamah Rashed Explores The ‘Third Body’
Revealing a reinterpretation of surrealism and folklore within the post-internet generation, Kuwaiti artist Alymamah Rashed’s biomorphic paintings explore the contemporary Muslima Cyborg
Like the memories she seeks to emulate, Alymamah Rashed’s paintings are both vivid and hazy. In almost violent fleshy tones, a sea of red fingertips reach out and rouged lips smear across the canvas. Translucent and devoid of features, bodies are washes of colour that leak into each other, or curl around carpets, fences and ouds, anchored into fables and narratives. Mimicking the ephemeral forms that memory takes on and the distorted sense of time and logic in the act of recollection, Alymamah’s layered figures are her shedded and compounded past selves, hybridising to reach spiritual attainment.
“The first body is the fleshed body and the second body is the thobe, and the combination of the two, the third body, is what I emit on the canvas,” the artist explains. “This is what I call the Muslima Cyborg. It is cyborgian not in the mechanical sense, but it refers to spiritual intelligence, as a motor, or a form of technology, as opposed to artificial intelligence and programming.”
Alymamah Rashed. When I Swam Out Of You. 2019. Watercolour on paper.
Alymamah’s distinctive practice and contemplations of the contemporary ‘Muslima’ body began to take form during her temporary emigration, while attending the School of Visual Art for her BFA and Parsons School of Design for her MFA, both on scholarship in New York. “I was the only Arab woman in the department,” she recalls. “No one really got where I’m coming from and I was pigeonholed, learning about my culture through a Western lens. That didn’t sit well with me.”
Instead, in a similar fashion to the techniques of securing chance encounters with objects separated from their functions in flea markets, Alymamah frequented second-hand bookstores in the search of decontextualised bodies of objective knowledge. “I used to go into used bookstores on the weekend and sit there and I was mind-blown,” she reveals, “Because we didn’t have that. We don’t have many bookstores in Kuwait. There was a whole section on Islamic spirituality. I started looking at the books and I discovered Ibn Khaldun’s work, I discovered Ibn Arabi and a lot of Islamic scholars combining spirituality and science that I had never heard of and would never be taught about.”
Alymamah Rashed. I Repeat Myself To Catch My Missed Delight #5. 2020. Oil on wax fabric.
The artist also found herself beginning to be able to process the rapid industrialisation, city-building and breaks with tradition that the Gulf region had been experiencing in the 21st century.
Her visual resistance against the hyperreal structures that now make up the cityscape is visible in the illustrative ornamentation, traditional regional architectural features, domestic objects and fauna that, referring the overlooked late Algerian modernist pioneer Baya Mahieddine, decorate her idiosyncratic form of autobiographical portraiture.
Alymamah Rashed. When I Escaped From The Sound Of Your Hills (your name is upon my tongue). 2020. Oil on canvas.
But Alymamah’s work is not merely a nostalgic ode to a bygone era, or an esoteric examination of post-oil condition. Instead, the artist found herself incorporating her own personal female subjectivity and delving into the personal traumas that imprint these various bodies and selves.
Drawing on a range of experiences as diverse as aggressive Islamophobic encounters and malaises such as hormonal imbalances, the scars of childhood chickenpox and body dysmorphia.
Alymamah Rashed.Your body is away from me. 2020. Oil on canvas.
The artist points out, “These are very slight and simple things but they weigh heavily on us, especially if you are a woman. And women do not talk about it! To be vulnerable and open about the personal [body] is very necessary right now. We need to advocate more for it,” she insists.
“Specifically with what is happening right now in the US and how it is implicating the Gulf and really everywhere in the world.” But she’s also very wary of falling into longstanding tropes or stereotypes – “I hate it when I see certain artists orientalise or exoticise their victimisation!” she adds, making sure to avoid the use of a sensationalising symbology.
Alymamah Rashed. Will you guard my truth? 2020. Oil on canvas.
Thinking beyond identity politics, the artist surveys her fluid daily movements and the discrepancies between wearing the hijab, thobe and not any cultural markers at all.
“With every work, I work rapidly, as I’m not looking for answers but I enjoy asking questions. I want to explore the third body in all its multiplicity,” she concludes. The artist has exhibited in New York and Kuwait, curated multiple shows and now holds a teaching position at Kuwait University.
Images courtesy of the artist
From the Autumn 2020 issue of Harper’s BAZAAR Art