Synopsis
A map of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), composed of fragments of paint that the artist collected from walls in cities across the world, hangs from the ceiling. Only when visitors stand under the map can they fully see the shape of the country that it represents. The artist originally created this work in 2009 as a site-specific installation for the Sharjah Biennale. Sharjah is one of the seven Emirates of the UAE.
Nadia Kaabi-Linke, who is of a mixed Tunisian and Ukrainian background, lived in the UAE from 1990 to 1995. While the map is of the UAE, the differently colored and shaped paint fragments are from various cities, like the people who work and live there.
Under Standing Over Views (2009) by Hoor Al Qasimi*
“A fundamental element of geography is the description and explanation of population distribution.”¹
Nadia Kaabi-Linke’s practice touches on notions of memory and the ways in which individual identities are formed by political events and changing geographies. In Under Standing Over Views, Kaabi-Linke drew on her personal experience of living in the UAE as an adolescent in the early 90s, confronted with regional politics, including the first Gulf War, while experiencing the multi-cultural environment of the Emirates.
Commissioned for the 2009 Sharjah Biennial 9, Provisions for the Future, this installation recreates a map of the UAE using fragments of paint reclaimed from cities the artist traveled to or worked in between 2006 and 2009. These cities—among them Tunis, Berlin, and Kyiv—are revisited in the work in both a personal journey and a representation of the constant change and evolution of place.
Each piece or “slice” of paint is reconstructed, strengthened with paper and glue, and hung from the ceiling by black silk threads. The height and the angle of the suspended map confront the viewer with a fractured image that is difficult to decipher. The viewer can only imagine or recreate the map through personal knowledge and experience of the country. Spotlights project from above, creating shadows on the gallery floor and walls. This distorted representation of the map can never give an accurate or faithful view. Here, the shadow becomes a metaphor for the constantly shifting and contested geopolitical, social, and cultural conditions of the region.
Asserting the futility of defining a single point of view, this work calls for nuanced interpretation and recognition of the complex character of context and situation.
Now part of the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection, this work suggests to viewers a different perspective on this multi-cultural and diverse country at a time of increasing uncertainty, conflict, and war within the rapidly changing geography of the Middle East.
—Hoor Al Qasimi
* Article published in Nadia Kaabi-Linke: Matter Matters <2016. Edited by Timo Kaabi-Linke. Kerber Publishing: Bielefeld, 2015.
¹ Deborah Potts, “The Changing Geography of Southern Africa,” in The Changing Geography of Africa and the Middle East, eds. Graham P. Chapman and Kathleen M. Baker (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 35.
