Originally posted on January 9, 2017 by Max Dugan
Abstract:
Against the backdrop of the internment of Japanese Americans, Curator Atif Sheikh and Asian Arts Initiative have brought together diverse artists to elucidate the Muslim experience in contemporary North America in the show I Bear Witness. Using the thematic device of “palimpsest,” a manuscript that has been recycled for new writing, the show features excerpts from Good Luck Soup and multi-media work from contemporary artists. The included artists discuss the dehumanizing discourse in the United States, as well as the potential for triumphant hope, best exemplified in Saba Taj’s prophesy of a spectacularly queer intersectional messiah’s defeat of a Trump-monster. I Bear Witness’s celebration of innovative Muslim American artists and message of hope in the face of our current predicament is of the utmost importance to us today.
Intro:
We necessarily experience all art in its specific context; unfortunately, our current context is rife with xenophobes depicting Muslims as the “dangerous other.” In light of the sudden national discourse, Asian Arts Initiative’s show I Bear Witness is almost too relevant; the artwork’s intellectual and emotional articulations about our current predicament sometimes eclipse their craft and creativity. That written, I Bear Witness transcends as a testament to the creative power of intersectional people, almost all of color, and their work’s capacity to challenge the hate in our world. Curator Atif Sheikh brilliantly gathers perspectives that reveal the many sides to the United States’s current predicament, ultimately providing viewers sadness, frustration, and, most importantly, hope.
I Bear Witness is currently hung at the Asian Arts Initiative at 1219 Vine Street near Chinatown. The show features the work of Amina Ahmed, Josh Begley, Ambreen Butt, Hasan Elahi, Sham-e-Ali Nayeem, Saba Taj, and Patricia Wakida hung on every wall of the gallery space. The artwork is accompanied by four iPads, each of which contains excerpts from Good Luck Soup, a film about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and after. The film is very significant to understanding the show, serving as a palimpsest for the curated pieces—the next section will elucidate the meaning and importance of “palimpsest.” Ranging from prints, to paintings, oblique to pointed critiques, each artist distinguishes their work both stylistically and thematically. I Bear Witness’s polyvalent curation ultimately reveals the complexity of the dehumanization we are all witnessing in the United States and abroad.
Curator Atif Sheikh’s framing of the show as a palimpsest guides viewers to the realization that the United States has been here before (albeit sans iPhones and, frustratingly, avec echo-chambered social media). For those of you who, like me before this exhibit, do not know the word’s meaning, the Oxford English Dictionary defines a “palimpsest” as “a parchment or other writing-material written upon twice, the original writing having been erased or rubbed out to make place for the second; a manuscript in which a later writing is written over an effaced earlier writing.” In the same way that scribes recycled papyrus to pen new writings, Sheikh engaged the United States’ internment of Japanese Americans during World War II to understand our contemporary predicament. This palimpsest lens amplifies the pieces’ respective themes and illuminates their layers.
The iPads provide attendees numerous vignettes of the interment and post-internment experience, thereby offering the original source on which the artwork is written as a palimpsest. These narratives deal variously with the post-camp experiences, camp experiences, and many individual anecdotes and perspectives. For everyone interviewed there was some traumatic episode or theme. In spite of the inhumanity of the internment, the power of humanity is such that many interviewees found silver linings. For one Eva Hashiguchi, that was the disparate West Coast Japanese community coming together, or meeting her future-husband. For another, that was a guard on watchtower duty retrieving a paper airplane stuck on barbed wire. Still, many recall PTSD symptoms or the suicides that took place in the internment camps. Importantly, the variety of narratives complicates the artwork’s interpretation while also providing an excellent canvas, or, in this case, manuscript on which to understand the contemporary Muslim experience in North America.
To begin the palimpsest mode, Hasan Elahi and Patricia Wakida’s pieces deal directly with the darkness of the internment camps. Wakida’s print I Am An American: Family No. 25344 sets the internment camp’s mood with its barbed wire and Japanese American citizen resigned in their predicament as the “other.” In Fifth Horseman, Elahi superimposes an enormous flag over a black-and-white image of an internment camp from the guard tower. While Elahi’s piece is initially striking in its contrast of our symbol of freedom with imprisonment, the image’s ambiguity allows it to be any prison. The viewer might assume it to be an internment camp, but it could also be a contemporary prison of the industrial kind, or a camp for whatever marginalized group is our future’s scapegoat.
Joshua Begley’s digital art piece Profiling thematically overlaps with a reoccurring theme in the Good Luck Soup excerpts: the irrational and highly biased interpretation of the Other’s reality. In the same way a Japanese farmer’s electric fence is perceived as a secret code device, mosques and Muslim homes are perceived by the government to be epicenters of some highly-fictitious construct, such as “Radical Islamic Terrorism.” Begley’s montage of these very surveillance photos reveals the government’s Islamophobic activities, while simultaneously showing those spaces’ benignity.
Moving beyond the bittersweet silver lining, Saba Taj prophesizes the triumph of a spectacularly queer intersectional messiah over a Trump-monster in her spectacular work The Return of Hazrat Isa, Queer Remix. An enormous panel of canvas covered in every color, glitter, and spray paint, Taj places a heroine Isa (“Jesus” in Arabic, with messianic connotations) at the intersection of symbolic figures: (1) to her left, a hybridic man-peacock extending blue nerve-like structures to Isa; (2) to her right, a hybridic woman-peacock extending golden nerve-like structures to Isa; (3) through her, a column extending the height of the canvas with the seventh and eighth ayat of the Qur’an; (4) from her head, a swirl of intense blue clouds that intimate power. Present is a monster composed using Trump’s image, impaled by a sword emanating from flowers of paradise at the base of the piece. Combining punk aesthetic, mythical imagery, and Islam, Taj shows the power of intersectionality and innovative reinterpretation.
Throughout the show, I pondered on the power of collaboration to liberate. If I Bear Witness had been single artist it might have been easier to digest and understand the creator’s perspective; however, the conclusions drawn might also have been one-sided. As a curated exhibition featuring multiple perspectives, any understanding of the show reinforced our current predicament’s polyvalence. There is no simple solution to contemporary dehumanization and polarization, and no uniform response. Sham-E-Ali Nayeem’s poetry and photos reveals the sadness felt by Islamophobic xenophobia and Amina Ahmed’s noose hangs over a grave to which we all witness, whether or not we can bear it. At the same time, Saba Taj produces an image of pure power and hope: the defeat of a meager orange monster by the overwhelming intersection of mythical heroes, Islam, and myriad articulations of gender. The beauty of the blue emanating from her heroine’s head is the color that powers a revolution. In bringing together so much in a single show, I Bear Witness exemplifies for our nation a path forward: collaborating with the Other, celebrating coexisting realities, and cultivating hope amidst trauma.
Although I Bear Witness will be open at Asian Arts Initiative until January 20th, 2017, the closing reception, featuring a multi-sensory performance by art collective Ta’sheeq, will take place on Friday, January 13th.
Max is passionate about everything Islamic and Islamicate, especially as it manifests in North America. Currently, he is the Program Coordinator for Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture, and a Group Leader for the Interfaith Center of Greater Philadelphia’s Walking the Walk program. In the future, he hopes to become a scholar in fields related to Islamic studies, Islamicate cultures, or religious studies.