Gerald Matt, “Amal Kenawy”, Gerland Matt ed., Interviews 2, Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008, pp. 134-1441
Gerald Matt was born in 1956; he studied Law, Business Management and Art History. He’s had a long career as a curator and has been the General Director of the ‘Kunsthalle Wien’ in Vienna since 1996.
Artist Amal Kenawy was born in 1974. She studied Film and Fashion Design at the Academy of Fine Arts at the Cinema Institute in Cairo (1997-1999) and received a BA in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Helwan University in Egypt, 1999.
Amal Kenawy states that her work “deals with the influence of society on humans, on how society affects their understanding of certain events and feelings.”[1] She talks about her work in terms of perception, making it obvious that she is aware of the notion that her audience can’t separate themselves from their own cultural history and experiences, which in tern affects the way that an individual perceives her work. She incorporated these ideas into her work by being consciously aware that her artistic investigations are subjective and shaped by her cultural views; “my exploration of the subjects of birth, marriage, and death is influenced by my society’s/culture’s views on them”.[2]
In psychology this is described as Recognition and Identification, “To interpret what you see, you need to compare the input to stored information. If the input matches something you’ve stored in memory, the information can be applied to the present case. If the object is recognised, it seems familiar; if it is identified, you know additional facts about it.”[3]
Kenawy aims to express ideas such as “how experiences or surroundings affect an individual or how, conversely, an individual reflects his surroundings.”[4] The work “You Will Be Killed”, which is the central focus in this reading, is highly reliant on her own personal interpretation of a particular place, in this case, a hospital. She states, “The work deals with instances of violence.” “The work is about violence in general”.[5] Her interpretation of a hospital, which informs the work, is very subjective. My personal interpretation of a hospital is one of nurturing and healing, not of violence. There are contradictory ideas behind this work, one that’s reliant on the audiences interpretation based on the their cultural background, and the other is dependant on the artists interpretation of a place.
[1] Gerald Matt, “Amal Kenawy”, Gerland Matt ed., Interviews 2, Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008, pp. 135
[2] Gerald Matt, “Amal Kenawy”, Gerland Matt ed., Interviews 2, Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008, pp. 135
[3] Kosslyn S.M, & Rosenberg R.S. Psychology in Context, 3rd edition, Chapter 4. From Psychology, An introduction text for the University of Auckland, 2008, pp. 151
[4] Gerald Matt, “Amal Kenawy”, Gerland Matt ed., Interviews 2, Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008, pp. 139
[5] Gerald Matt, “Amal Kenawy”, Gerland Matt ed., Interviews 2, Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008, pp. 136
I found your comment on the reliance of audiences to relate to certain topics or concepts within a work in the same way that the artist does, as experiences of place are dependant on each individual and I believe that much of why an art work is unsuccessful is because of the artist's reliance on shared experience of the audience. Perhaps to counter this, Kenawy may present her experiences or interpretation of place to the audience as propositions, to which they may understand places such as a hospital in the same way that she does.
ReplyDeleteRichie, I think that when an artist engages with a site their awareness of multiple readings of the site is paramount. However I think that trying to find sites that are universally interperated is an impossible feat.
ReplyDeleteBecause of this, an artist must be prepared to embrace multiple readings. I do not think however that the artist should not draw on their own experience as a resource for site connotations.