<<CLICK TO GO BACK TO PAGE 1

There is something fundamentally literary in Alshaibi’s sequencing choices as she integrates her body into the landscape. In the photo series “Ruins: Roadside-Roman” and “Red Sea,” Alshaibi’s persona is that of a scribe recording a narrative with pictures. She is both inside and outside of the narratives. The sequenced images strongly suggest words or phrases. They almost function as hieroglyphs or pictographs in their symmetry and singularity. In “Red Sea’s” first panel “the narrator” (Alshaibi) literally points us back to the beginning. The second panel is the moon, low on the horizon, acting as an anchor point drifting us back to the first image. It acts as a pause. The panel with reflected water is a new phrase and the final panel is punctuation like the periods at the end of a sura in a highly decorated Koran. In the series “Ruins: Roadside-Roman” our eyes begin to follow a narrative, but get caught in the central two panels that create a visual eddy. The last panel on the far right unexpectedly changes the direction of our gaze by bringing us back to the central eddy. We discover that the narrative begins again but this time from the right side. The shifting path turns and twists, bringing us back to a central focus that urges us on to the next “phrase.” Our expectations are undermined as we notice that we may be going in circles. Alshaibi has commented, “My creative research also extends into areas of collective trauma and how the role of memory containers (such as art) and memorials are used as vehicles to resist the effacement and obliteration of that history. As a Palestinian-Iraqi, my identity is rooted in a violent and traumatic past that is still being afflicted; to situate that history….connects me from my safety zone in the US back into the red zone of Iraq or the Occupied territories of Palestine…there are only circles, no lines to a path out.”3 However, there is a path out: it is not the expected path but one that leads us toward other considerations previously not available to us.

Alshaibi explores the “disinherited” from various roles, such as an Orientalist muse from the Ottoman/ European Imperial period and a sage tour guide. “Wanderlust” “Passage” and “Habitat, Budrus - Tucson” display halting stops and mini symmetries as our eyes rush to the central figure of Alshaibi miming a curve in the landscape. In these photos the land and Alshaibi’s body are tied together by a metaphoric umbilicus. These highly orchestrated “connections” are disquietingly witty and playful, especially in the piece “Habitat, Budrus - Tucson.” Here the incongruity between a semi-veiled Alshaibi and the archetypal Arizona landscape with its authentic Saguaro cacti is both hilarious and poignant. Alshaibi’s use of jarring and smooth visual directives draws us into her struggle between adaptation and reinvention.

We Make the Road by Walking is a conversation where archetypal roles and the stuff of life, the detritus are carefully examined without offering hardened conclusions. Journeying to their various themes whether they are metaphorical, erroneous, mysterious or precise, Sama Alshaibi and Beth Krensky embrace their inheritances, always as starting points, starting points that their varied audiences may want to borrow. Alshaibi and Krensky are scribes for their respective cultures, writing and rewriting their cultures. The art works create an ironic space that sits beside the dusty artifacts of the past, the unmitigated violence of the present, and the fear of a dismal future. A new clearing is found where the familiar images, objects and stereotypes of their respective cultures are seen as if for the first time. Perhaps We Make the Road by Walking clears a psychic space for the possibility of a shared future.

Notes:

1. Beth Krensky’s artist statement
2. ibid
3. Sama Alshaibi’s artist statement

Doris Bittar paintings, photographs and installations have been reviewed nationally and internationally in such journals as Art in America,. Bittar has received numerous awards including the Puffin Foundation Grant, California Arts Council Artist’s Fellowship, and participation in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. Bittar writings have been widely published, including the San Diego Union-Tribune, the cultural quarterly Al Jadid magazine. The Los Angeles Times and Beirut’s Alhayat. Bittar received a MFA from the University of California, San Diego. Bittar’s community and conflict resolution work include serving as a board member for the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, creating and facilitating Jewish-Palestinian dialogue groups, and making appearances on radio and television. The National Conflict Resolution Center, the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the American Civil Liberties Union have recognized Bittar’s community and artistic accomplishments. Doris Bittar has been part of the adjunct faculty at the University of California, San Diego since 1996 and taught at the American University of Beirut in 2005 among other colleges and universities. She lives in San Diego with her husband, James Rauch and two sons, Joseph and Gabriel.