I was reminded of how important a political stance is to many artists by Kelly Chorpening's presentation at the drawing symposium in Bristol. I was particularly interested in Mounira al Solh's series of portraits on yellow legal pad paper, that record those who have been displaced or exiled from the Middle East and other regions, but who are now living in Lebanon, Germany, Greece, many of whom are making the transition from refugee status or temporary migrant to permanent resident. Al Solh has continued this series, collaborating with local Gateshead women who have moved to the North East and has been collecting their stories from personal conversations and encounters.These are women’s stories of separation, loss, hope and resilience and in order to both capture them and display them Al Solh has been making a large decorative tent that has been developed collaboratively with women embroiderers from Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Turkey, the Netherlands and South Africa. Made with hand-stitched and machined embroidery on organic henna-tinted hemp, the work is based on an Iranian ceremonial tent from the Qajar era in Iran, currently in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio. The tent is richly embellished with embroidered floral patterns and birds, and the outside panels are decorated by Arabic words which describe notions of sadness and happiness. The tent also contains a sound piece recounting the words of the women she meets, mixed with Iranian songs of sadness and nostalgia.
Electric Peacock: Mounira al Solh
However when I began to look at Mounira al Solh's other work such as her Electric Peacock drawing, I was also reminded of how the poetic and the political can be woven together and in that weaving something else emerges, something that can transcend the political.
The private and the political merge into each other in the wonderful coloured gouache drawings of Charlotte Saloman. I love her book 'Life? or Theatre?', it is one of those testaments to life that when you come across them reinforce your own commitment to keep trying to make images that may at sometime make sense to others.
Charlotte Saloman
Whilst in hiding from the Nazis in France between late 1940 and early 1942, Salomon painted a series of approximately 200 images reflecting on her life. She combined images, texts and musical references, but most of all she was simply 'honest' and straightforward, never self pitying and always life affirming. To look through her work always brings me to tears. Perhaps because my grandmother was of Polish Jewish descent I am prone to be more emotionally engaged with her work, but even so, I can't not recommend her work highly enough. Whether you are seeking to explore the potential of developing personal narratives around your own life, or whether you are simply looking for an artist that has combined text and image in such a way that they become fused, or looking for an artist that transcends the political, whilst still being political, Charlotte Saloman is someone to look at in detail. In 1943, she was killed at the age of 26, after been arrested and deported to Auschwitz; she was five months pregnant at the time.
Charlotte Saloman: Life? or Theatre?'
It is important to remember that art has sometimes been produced under the most difficult of circumstances, circumstances that at the time must have meant that there was little or no concept of being able to show work to an audience. But work was made, work that has affected and still affects other people's lives.
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