Review
by Sama Alshaibi
Counting Memories,
Oraib Toukan’s premier solo exhibition, is a promising
introduction to a Palestinian Jordanian artist who possesses
an impressive capacity for maturity and confidence in a cross-disciplinary
practice. Of particular distinction is her photographic project,
Icon Series, an investigation of ‘place,’ the
non-descript and common public spaces of Jordan, relating
the collective experience of contemporary Jordanians. In the
series, the place never fully reveals itself. Rather, it is
described incrementally from an anonymous perspective with
bits of visual experience that identify a general locality
where despite a lack of specifics, a viewer is strangely familiar
with the images that feature objects and languages from shared
spaces.
Toukan documents spaces inhabited by picture-objects that
speak of nationalism, God, and a seasoned longing for Jerusalem
tucked in a broader Palestinian nostalgia that are collected
and displayed along the dusty walls of ordinary spaces betrayed
of their commonness. The effect of “betraying commonness”
is executed primarily via Toukan’s control of light
that characterizes the photos in the series. Primarily through
the execution of subtle, mature lighting decisions, Toukan
is able to transform the ambient into the mystical with striking
results. The repetition of themes in the different spaces
suggests the iconic picture-objects displayed are born from
a collective identity, a shared memory understood by the Jordanian
people. This kind of shared consciousness is enforced in Toukan’s
work while the specificity of ‘place’ is minimized.
The images weave layers of the Jordanian citizens' psyche;
memories of homeland both past and present are preserved in
her photographs. The subject matter, the “icons”
(picture-objects), as well as the prints themselves, function
as a kind of memory container or unintentional time capsules.
In her book, The Image as Memorial, Martina Sturken proposes
that the photograph represents far more than its materiality
in that it either triggers memory (whose characteristics are
vulnerable and ephemeral in nature) or produces it. She states,
“The photograph may be perceived as a container for
memory, it is not inhabited by memory so much as it produces
it; it is a mechanism through which the past can be constructed
and situated with the present.” The spaces in Icon Series
reflect the private and historic impressions Jordanians have
of their homeland, but the images themselves visually map
a Jordanian identity that is public, collective, and present
in its orientation on the gallery walls.
Toukan’s images confront the collective memory inscribed
into these spaces, negotiating a memory that is not quite
one’s own memory, but one feels they can remember from
somewhere, nonetheless. The significance of the ubiquitous
objects ostensibly depicting allegiance to King and devotion
to God appear conflicted in their haphazard placement. They
are hung slightly off and look worn and battered, as if they
have been forgotten. Even so, Toukan eloquently denotes their
significance by presenting them in soft, glowing light. The
luminosity of afternoon shafts beaming through dirty windows
and exaggerated by neon bulbs elevates each site. Her manipulation
of neon light is particularly captivating. Toukan deftly redeems
harsh, uncomplimentary neon light and employs it to reveal
each location’s spiritual power. The locations suggest
sanctuary, its icons, an alter space to Jordan, the images
themselves a memorial to a country.
Toukan’s photographs engender a remarkable amount of
intimacy. Although large scale and rich in saturated color,
the images are quiet, almost whispering to the viewer. One
finds themselves being pulled in closer to listen, collapsing
the space between viewer and print. In an intimate distance,
the images change. The softness of the light, the vacant spaces
void of detail juxtaposed to recognizable and repeating objects,
speaks to the act of remembering in itself. Only glimpses
are fleshed out, the rest is a hazy impression, like a story
in which you can only remember a few of the details rather
than the entire tale. Toukan’s images highlight that
there are not only shared images, but shared ways of experiencing
memory as well. The series exploits this by functioning on
the concept of “first impressions,” similar to
the reaction one has when one enters a room one has never
been in, or meeting someone for the first time. The mind can’t
gather in quite everything, but subconsciously scans around
quickly for clues. Like a new acquaintance, we search and
evaluate Toukan’s images for access to the identity
of its non-present inhabitants; their religion, nationality
and economic status are revealed but only briefly; more unique
and substantial details are not easily deciphered. We greet
the rooms in her prints as if it were a stranger, our comfort
level and kinship towards it is dependent upon on our own
proximity to the coded language of the space.
Distance, proximity, and language take on another form in
Toukan’s single channel, split screen video, Remind
Me To Remember to Forget. The act of contemplating the title
alone can trigger memories one cares not to remember, provoking
another personal level of meaning in Toukan’s juxtaposed
performances. The ephemerality of memories, words, and human
breath intermingle in the video. The right side, a close up
of a person’s throat, in absence of speaking, breathes.
On the left, the words in Arabic, “remind me to remember
to forget,” is blown down a pen’s barrel in gold
glitter, and then sucked back into the blue, red and white
pen. The meaning of this piece is again dependent on the viewer’s
distance or proximity to the subject. Those whose countries
and personal lives supported the total amnesia of war in its
immediate aftermath will probably remain distant to its effectiveness.
Those who cannot forget endure the painful watching of erasure
and eventual absence of the words as stand-ins for the people,
homes, and safety that perished in the summer of 2006 in Lebanon,
when this video was produced. The disturbing sounds of labored
breathing juxtaposed to the visual of the throat is a reminder
of human fragility and the silence that fell after the end
of the war. The throat doesn’t scream, doesn’t
flinch, and doesn’t move. It simply, and barely, breathes.
Absence isn’t a concept that is easily described in
video. Toukan manages to tackle the subject through the vehicle
of erasure. The tension between presence and absence performed
in the blowing and sucking of the glitter is extended by the
medium itself. Unedited video, in this case, the ‘long-take’
performance, suggests an accurate record of the event. The
act of erasure is on view to watch over and over again in
vivid, accurate, and moving picture details that speak specifically
to the abduction of justice that occurs in spite of the fact
that it transpires every day before our eyes. It is a painful
reminder of what has become a daily norm in the Middle East;
the news and media each day broadcasting death and destruction
in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq, the spin that follows, and
the deafening silence that answers from the international
world.
Ordinary citizens can only scream into the silence or choke
down the bitterness of the images and a memory that eludes
them. Toukan’s performance is a haunting personal reenactment
of the effacement of public memory, while simultaneously commemorating
the disregarded victims of the war. Her exhibition is an influential
commentary on the sociopolitical times of the Middle East,
encoding, defining and straddling the line between collective
memory and collective amnesia, suggesting that remembering
and forgetting are born from the same need to survive, to
relate, and to destroy.
Sama Alshaibi
Assistant Professor of Art
Photography Department, University of Arizona, USA
i Marita Sturken, “The Image as Memorial: Personal Photographs
in Cultural Memory,” in The Familial Gaze, ed. Marianne Hirsch
(Handover: University Press of New England, 1999), 178.
ii Ibid.
iii Sama Alshaibi, “Memory Work in the Palestinian Diaspora,”
in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, (University of Nebraska
Press, 2006)
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