In Absentia
Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Untitled 3, (Self Portrait Series) (2002-03) Digital print, 55 x 75 cm., Untitled 7, (Self Portrait Series), (2002-03) Digital print, 55 x 75 cm., Untitled 5, (Self Portrait Series) (2002-03) Digital print, 55 x 75 cm. Images courtesy of The Third Line, Dubai.
Tarek Al-Ghoussein and I met by literally crashing right into each other in Sharjah in 2005. We were both exhibiting our work in the Biennale—he was showing A + B Series and The War Room and I was showing embrace and Ramallah/New York. I had walked into his space just as he was running out. Since that moment, Tarek and I became close friends and colleagues and appeared side by side in many exhibitions. Though very different, we share a very particular set of commonalities, which include: growing up Palestinian in the Gulf; our American accents; a shared literary love for Shelley, Blake, and Kafka; as teenagers, we were both into heavy metal, a musical taste we had acquired in the Gulf; and a forced nomadism so extreme that it was/is absurd at times.
Emily Jacir (EJ): So maybe we should begin with an anecdote from our childhoods? Something linked to our current artistic practices? Do you have a story or moment you could recount?
Tarek Al-Ghoussein (TAG): If any experience has shaped the Self Portraits, it was probably the American/Iranian hostage crisis in 1979. At the time, I was a junior at the American school in Kuwait and most of my friends (including my girlfriend) were Americans. However, as a result of this political development, they all had to leave the Middle East and, for the first time, I became aware of the ways in which (parts of our) identity is superimposed on us. It is always difficult to assess childhood/youth experience retrospectively and one's own memory is not always to be trusted. Even so, I do believe that this experience has had a lasting impact on me. What about you?
EJ: I think one of the things that I remember most clearly are the performances I used to do in the living room of our house. There were no public entertainment places in Saudi Arabia—no cinema, theaters, or dance. Some television and videos from other countries were banned or severely censored. So, I used to put on plays for my family at home. I would hand-sew all the costumes, design and construct the sets, do makeup, and make my little sister and brother my actors. Another thing I used to do was create these elaborate and fantastical (well as a kid, I thought they were!) environments. I remember my dad had a chair with wheels and I would put one parent at a time in the chair and slowly push them through a tour of the world I had created. I wonder what they thought... I should ask them about that.
I would like to know how you feel about the way people have defined you. For example, I often see you described as being “of Palestinian origin.” To me, this implies that your living experience in the present is not “Palestinian.”
TAG: The word origin is easily misconstrued. In the true sense of the word, it does not negate one’s bond or continued relationship with a particular place or group, i.e. to be of Palestinian origin does not necessarily imply that one is no longer Palestinian. The danger of misunderstandings is even greater when one addresses the controversial and ambiguous term "identity."
I get frustrated with the obligation to define one's own identity in terms of a particular place or group. The term "identity" is complicated and the word is often used without recognizing this complexity. The work I have produced since moving to Sharjah ten years ago is an attempt to speak to some of these complexities.
EJ: How much of this is your own desire to identify yourself? How much pressure do you put on yourself to self-define?
TAG: Both of my parents were born and raised in Palestine but had to leave as the result of the Israeli occupation. We are forbidden by the Israeli Government from ever returning. I was born in Kuwait and was fortunately given citizenship as a result of my father’s work with the government. [I am grateful that Kuwait granted me citizenship but] I left the country three months after I was born and did not return until my last three years of high school. Due to my travels, I learned to read and write in English and Japanese before I did so in Arabic; and my Arabic is a mixture of several dialects.
When I introduce myself as a Palestinian, some have been quick to ask how I can define myself as such when I speak Arabic with a foreign accent and have never been to the country. These reactions have obviously been uncomfortable and have made me question the tendency to essentialize national/ethnic identity. Early in the 1990s, I spent about a year photographing in several of the Palestinian Refugee Camps in Jordan. Not once did the Palestinians in the camp ever challenge my "identity.” My need to self-define fluctuates, but it certainly does come to light when I have to fill in forms for a temporary exhibition or when I am applying for a visa. However, it's equally frustrating when people question the authenticity of my Kuwaiti passport. I remember one incident in Egypt during the first Gulf War. I was driving to town with a Bedouin friend of mine. We were stopped at a checkpoint and the soldier was immediately convinced that I was a spy because I had a Kuwaiti passport but did not look like a Kuwaiti to him. As a result, we spent two nights in prison—that is, until they had verified my "identity." People often mistake me for being American because of my accent, but try to convince an immigration officer in the USA of that!
EJ: I remember you feeling very uncomfortable about the B series, which I think is linked to this issue. The wall in your photos was a reference to the Apartheid Wall the Israelis were constructing throughout Palestine. Can you talk about this?
TAG: I remember a very impassioned discussion you and I had in Jordan when we were showing together at Darat Al Funoon in 2006. This exchange had a great impact on me. I told you that I felt like a hypocrite showing a piece that addresses the wall next to your work. I felt that I had no “right” to make a work in response to the wall in Palestine because I was not living there and thus did not suffer the consequences of it like so many Palestinians. You argued that my experience was one of many and that I did have the right to address these issues, especially considering the fact that I am forbidden from ever entering. That talk resulted in a small epiphany for me. I was and continue to be fed up and angry at the way Palestinians as a whole were/are represented in Western Media and the conditions they face in Palestine. Through this work, I have indirectly—and to some degree, subconsciously—explored the relationship between group identity as a Palestinian and the lived experiences of my life. My perceived lack of a right to the subject and the associated hypocrisy I sometimes felt resulted from the fact that I have not lived the experience of the wall (or any other hardship experienced by Palestinians in Palestine).
EJ: You have lived the experience and hardships of being severed from your own country, banned from ever entering—a hardship that Palestinians living in Palestine have not experienced. You, like most Palestinians who were exiled after 1948, grew up in a family that suffered and still suffers a tremendous loss. You grew up with passports, identity cards, languages, and cultures that were not your own... guests in other people's countries. Your work speaks of these slippages in space, time, architecture, and culture.
The Self-Portraits have haunted me ever since I saw them. The images are both very personal but telling of a larger struggle and story. You are often quoted saying that this work is about how we are portrayed as terrorists but I think the work moves far beyond that. The work visually functions in a complex series of layers which speak of isolation, longing, nostalgia, diaspora, and resistance. One of the things I love about this series is the way you appear as an interruption in the scenes. I also think there is a multitude of visual clues that references our history or histories as communities and individuals; not to mention the visual language of the formal elements between the figure, space, and architecture. Tell us about this.
TAG: The images were initially made in response to the way in which Palestinians are continually mis(re)presented as terrorists. I wanted to challenge this stereotype, but I would also hope that the work transcends this narrow reading and addresses some of the concerns/sensibilities you mention.
EJ: I have read in many places that the lone figure in this series (you) is meant to conjure up the image of a terrorist—the kind the media has created—but for me, it reads as a Handala figure. It seems to represent the complexities we face, our history, and the spaces that we corrupt or corrupt us.
TAG: Naji Al-Ali's Handala is an inspirational figure and I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I was not familiar with it until I was well into the project. In retrospect, I am not sure that I would have continued to work this way if I had known of Handala before. Having said that, I do believe the similarities are superficial. Naji Al-Ali intends one message and I am attempting to communicate something altogether different.
EJ: One of the things I love about this particular series is the illusiveness of the figure. Is he coming or going? Is he free or imprisoned? Is he a terrorist, a hero, a failed figure? Is he victorious or defeated? Am I the antagonist or the victim?
TAG: The ambiguity that you speak of is intentional. I hope that there are multiple readings on several levels that are not oversimplified. With this body of work, I have enjoyed the varied interpretations depending on the context in which they were shown. I do admit that I hope the images encourage references to a journey, but they should allow for multiple interpretations.
EJ: In some of the photos, there is a strong sense of urgency; in others, an incredibly poetic stillness; and in others yet, a feeling of a lost heroism. They are ironic, but the feeling of failure in several is almost comedic, without being funny or ironic. Can we talk about our bodies? My body has been usually absent in my works and yours usually present. For the most part, the viewer has been privy to the remains of my performances, and the traces I leave behind, although currently, I am working on an animation in which I am the actor...
TAG: Putting myself in my work was a way for me to prolong the experience of making work and in which I could be actively responsible for any intervention or interruption that might take place within the scene. I tried working with actors, but it simply did not work for me. In the end, I enjoy being the director, actor, and cameraman (if someone is helping me, I frame the scene and offer a sketch of what I want). “Being there" is crucial for me and I do not think that I could do these images without that being part of the process.