Mai Al Moataz: Proof of Presence
A layering of poetic light through an obsessive process
Left to right: Mai Al Moataz, Peace and Pearl, from the series Proof of Presence (2015). Courtesy of the artist.
With Text by Tribe.
Tribe reviews the work of Bahraini artist Mai Al Moataz and the journey she takes in realizing her striking black and white photographs.
Mai Al Moataz’s work annotates the dichotomies that are continually reconstructed between one’s selves the internal struggle. The rift between the expected and the actual—the hidden and the apparent, the emotional and the composed, vague yet specific, vaguely specific—creates the space in which the light passes through the double negative.
Her latest series is emotionally loaded, yet carefully. It is an annotation of the self, which reaffirms the context in which the work was born into—an environment where the natural byproduct is none other than the puzzle of consolidating one’s many selves: the identity crisis.
She presents a nostalgic ode peppered with undertones of acceptance, a façade by merging seemingly incompatible worlds into one, where the possibility of the annulment of a fixed identity is a dream.
Obsessed with producing portraits using black and white film, she creates photographs through a meticulous and labor-intensive process, which can be seen as a deeply personal cathartic ritual. Her images are romantically solitary and ethereal, as they present emblems of nostalgia, innocence and femininity. With hints of isolation and sparkles of imagination, she explores the subjects of her portraits as a paradox of the internal versus the external, and where they meet, using time and space to deconstruct the fictional form the experiential universe.
Her process is inherently filled with anxiety. She awaits faithfully to see what was shot during the year due to the lack of black and white film labs on the islands of Bahrain. She travels to find darkrooms around the world to process the film and print from her negative. Her travels are incomplete without sourcing new equipment, testing different films, compulsively shooting and, when in luck, compulsively printing; then time stops.
Proof of Presence of two negatives layered and set into the darkroom enlarger with extra-long exposure times of 500 to 1500 seconds (8-25 minutes). The negatives were shot using a large format film camera on black and white film. The prints, produced using warm-tone fiber-based light sensitive photographic paper, are then processed in two different developers before fixing and washing. The final result reflects a series of superimposed multi-layered veils (or just layers) through which parts of the images appear only where the light passes through both negatives, literally portraying the rift ever so poetically.