Nouf Al-Mousa (Dubai)
The vision of the Emirati poet and film director Nujoom Al-Ghanem, as she displays works of artistic paintings, which she completed at different stages of time, starting from the nineties of the twentieth century until 2023, within her art exhibition “Outside the Frame”, which was launched yesterday evening, at “Aisha Al-Abbar Art Gallery” in the city of Dubai, after a long career in the field of poetic writing and independent film production, is a new space that opens the horizon of the recipient towards the impact of the development of the artistic experience on the human, social and cultural formation of the personality of the artist Nujoom Al-Ghanem. It is a movement towards realizing the essential dimensions of the instantaneous and creative accumulation that established, in some way, the sensitive sensitivity towards everything that is capable of intertextuality between our daily lives, our cultural and social heritage, and the unique reflections of the creators, and their wonderful ability to innovate the literary and aesthetic link, and evoke it with subtle lightness in the general societal consciousness. That is, the manifestations of the story of displaying the artist’s paintings by Nujoom Al-Ghanem began after her work on a group of portraits that appeared in the background of the 2019 installation film “Crossing”, during her second participation in the 58th Venice Biennale, for the benefit of the UAE National Pavilion. This was preceded by her first participation in 2017, and it received a remarkable turnout, and as a result questions about artworks developed, which inspired the creative community at the Maraya Arts Center in Sharjah to organize an art exhibition “Features” by the artist Nujoom Al-Ghanem, which included hundreds of faces and human expressions, leading to the exhibition « Outside the Frame”, through which Aisha Al-Abbar, founder of the “Aisha Al-Abbar Art Gallery”, was keen to visit the artist’s studio, start the journey of opening old boxes, and extract artistic meanings for the artist’s career, Nujoom Al-Ghanim, while the work of the curator focused on the exhibition Jolene Frizzell to parallel All these discoveries of artistic paintings, with photographs from the films of film director Nujoom Al-Ghanem, are accompanied by poetic verses, which she wrote in her handwriting on clips from her most prominent films: “Sound of the Sea”, “Sharp Instruments”, “Dove”, and “Nearby Sky”. .
personal hobby
The artist, Nujoom Al-Ghanim, explained in her interview with Al-Ittihad that art was a personal hobby for her, and she chose to keep the paintings after her for her family, but what happened as a result of the appreciative reactions to the paintings made her excited to present them to people, and perhaps what prompted the artist Nujoom Al-Ghanim most , to root the idea of participation, are the human results achieved by artistic participation, which is represented in bringing about “communication”, saying: “The artistic work is completed in the presence of the other, it is true that it starts from the self, and we practice it in our isolation, except that sometimes we go through personal circumstances that call for us The questions, which are how others see this work, that painting, and their answers, gestures, perceptions, and reflections are nothing but energy that we exchange between each other, and it is a very important issue, because it gives us a state of creative continuity and harmony with the act of life through works of art.
feeling nostalgic
The work of the artist Nujoom Al-Ghanim varied in the exhibition “Outside the Frame”, describing it as subjective, and its relationship to the city, which began, as she put it: “You enter my window, snatching from me the wide range, as the range has become narrower, and the sky has become smaller, and all of them belong to the idea and philosophy of the city.” , which has a clear reflection in my work ». With regard to the artworks “Woman”, 1997, “The Actress of That Scene”, 1994, “Noah’s Ark” 1995, “The People of Mars” 1995, which she completed during her undergraduate studies in the United States of America at Ohio University, in the “Athens” area, the artist indicated Nujoom Al-Ghanim noted her use of “burlap” in the painting, due to her feeling of nostalgia for her country, the Emirates. And she continued: We used to travel from the area where I study to a large city, to buy the needs of the house, including rice, which is called locally “bread”, which is placed in a bag made of “burlap” for safekeeping, and it was dear to me to throw it away, due to its deep association with my identity and memory, so I chose To cut it with scissors, and work on it as an artistic material, and despite the difficulty of the material and its superior ability to absorb colors frighteningly, and that it requires effort to adapt it, the effect of its presence in the painting always guides a hint of the symbolism of the spirit of the place and its people.
rediscover
During her studies, the artist Nujoom Al-Ghanim learned the different methods of art schools, and how to look at the materials used and rediscover them, indicating that she chose to work on oil colors, considering that it was an early choice, at that time, but it is due to her feeling of belonging to oil colors, driven by the illusion that she She is able to correct and change using these colors, and she does not know exactly where this illusion came from at the time, suggesting that the matter will return to lack of experience, but with practice and the development of her experience, through other materials she worked on such as “glass”, “ceramic” and “porcelain”. She reached a stage she called reconciliation with “acrylic” colors, as the latter was present in the last ten years of her artistic preoccupations.
The poetics of the word
And, “But when they turned to remember that sound…the joys turned into oceans and mountains.” Here is one of the poetic verses written in hand on a photograph from the film “Sound of the Sea” by film director Al-Ghanim, which cast a shadow over the viewers and visitors in the “Aisha Al-Abbar Art Gallery”, most of them They stopped to ask the artist about the poetic expressions of the word and her film photography. So what does the scene of the popular healer “Hamamah” achieve, as she chants through our souls her perceptions through a poetic scene from a movie produced in 2010, sung by Nujoom Al-Ghanim: “I hid the memories in the boxes … so that they remain new in their tapes … as if they were gifts that had not yet been opened.” And she enriched her as well. Her expressions of the whispers of the late plastic artist Hassan Sharif, the pioneer of conceptual art in the Emirates, through a photograph from the movie “Sharp Instruments”: “I remove their voices and faces from my shoulders.