If it were possible, would we undo what was done?
Would we press rewind, if we simply could, to change the chain of events and start all over?
Many ideas unraveled in Leila’s mind while pondering about such a possibility. Some revolved around regret, those events that should have been avoided given the consequences. Others just revolved around the word undoing and the duality it entails: unveiled/veiled, undelivered/delivered… to rewind and erase… the possibilities are endless.
To implement these contrasting ideas, six conceptual experiments came to be explored under the umbrella of the process of undoing…
Undelivered
A dismantled Vespa is painted and re-assembled, in a way where its pieces seem separated from the body, thereby losing its initial function – mobility, or… delivery.
Melting
45 cm wide x 30 high x 43 deep (smallest)
45 cm wide x 40 high x 43 deep (largest)
I often thought of the number of artworks an artist will find unsatisfying and end up destroying. The process of obliterating art is symbolically translated here by taking one of my bronze art pieces and destroying it as I melt the bottom part further into a puddle.
Undress
Knitted dress in “crochet”. The dress is tightly weaved at first, than the weave widens up like a cobweb to finally return to its initial state, a thread. All threads spread on the floor as if the dress is decomposing, to return to its primal stage – the thread itself.
Démonter
On going back to the origin of things, to the essence, came the idea of pottery, a craft that has been around for so many centuries and survived many civilizations.
Time, earthquakes, or man-made catastrophes have not been able to destroy their testimonies. Pottery has remained a witness to many lost civilizations’ existence and way of life.
I decided to do a piece that starts from the finished state of baked clay and ends with its origin – clay dust.
In order to see the different stages of the bowl unraveling backwards, all elements are placed on a wheel while the onlooker witnesses the process through a peephole, observing each stage of reversal at a time.
Rwanda
Drawing of a man that carries the stigma of human barbarism with a load of atrocities depicted on his flesh.
During the show, an eraser was provided inviting visitors to erase those atrocities. Their interactions were video-taped, as well as their symbolic contribution to the erasing of events.
Traces still remain, as much as one tries – we are never able to completely expunge old wounds.
Playing it backwards
Interactive work on canvas, addressing the dropping of the Hiroshima bomb on Japan. Was it the only way to end the war? Could there have not been another eventuality that would have ended the infamous war?
By painting the mushroom clouds on nine 50×50 cm canvasses backwards, and removing layers of paint, I reverse the process by choosing life, ultimately falling back unto an oak tree.
The layout of the oak tree is also painted on nine 50x50cm canvasses fixed back to back with the mushroom clouds, and the reversing process happens with the help of a mechanism that turns the canvasses around one by one in a sequence, whereby the Hiroshima mushroom is replaced by the tree of life.
Unveil
A symbolic way of representing the conflict facing the modern woman.
Trying to find the right measure between revealing nothing or too much of her proves to be a real challenge.
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