Each piece of art has its own story and meaning behind. Being an artist oneself or not, when looking at an artwork it is always difficult to explore the meaning and really get an idea what the artist wants to express. Sometimes the artwork title guides the observer to encompass the context, even more often only the artist’s statement will lead to deeper comprehension. Understanding art is directly related to understanding the story behind.
My lates work is a good example for art which can only be understood when knowing the story behind:
“Colour of Sound” – illustrated poetry to music by arsnecopinata
“Colour of Sound” was done in approximately 2 hours only, painted with acrylics in basic colours red, yellow, blue, green, black and white. It happened during the first edition of “The Colour of Sound” event presented by EPHX. “The Colour of Sound” incorporates music, poetry and fine arts inspiring each other. As one of the two participating artists my job was to create a painting on the spot. This had to be an inspired action while music played on the backdrop. Not just live music but poetry recitals. In the beginning of the event I was handed a copy of four poems. These where written by worthsmiths Afra Atiq and Adel Awad. I illustrated these four poems together on a 100x70cm sized canvas. The way I chose and blended colours was directy inspired by music performance of “The Hype”, a band assembling Abu Dhabi’s finest musicians, offering a style uniting components of jazz, blues and lounge music.
This information so far still doesn’t really help the beholder to understand the painting’s content. To really comprehend the artwork, one needs to know the poetry texts:
The first poem written by Adel Awad is named “Lost” and gives deep insights about the difficulty to define his own identity when “…being born as a second generation Asian immigrant in an Arab land immersed in western media”. [click to read full version]
The second poem performed by Afra Atiq is named “Dear Food”, which she claims to be her only love poem ever written. [click to read full version]
The third poem written by Afra Atiq comes along untitled but even more meaningful. It is about her grandfather’s ability “…to hold his breath” in liturally sense due to his work as a pearl fisher, and in metaphorical meaning referring to his fight against cancer. [click to read full version]
The fourth poem written by Adel Awad is named “Excess Baggage”, shaping out the ephemerality of relations and the traces left by those while living in an expat dominated country. Adel Awad created an impressive allegory picturing a train station, himself sitting, waiting on a bench as observer of passersby, letting their excess baggage behind… [click to read full version]
Now, after reading the associated poetry, the beholder will have an idea how to “read”, to comprehend and interprete the artwork…
My artist collegue B’lu performed as well during that event. Her “Colour of Sound” artwork is associated to poetry of Safwa Mohammed and Justin Levy.
“Colour of Sound” by artist B’lu
fine artists B’lu and arsnecopinata