The Traumatic Past. Abdullah Qureshi. 199 THAAP Journal 2015: Culture, Art & Architecture of the Marginalized & the Poor. Figure 1

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1 199 THAAP Journal 2015: Culture, Art & Architecture of the Marginalized & the Poor The Traumatic Past Abdullah Qureshi There is something very special in being able to sublimate your unconscious, and there is something very painful in the access to it. But there is no escape from it, and no escape from the access once it is given to you, once you are favored with it, whether you like it or not Louise Bourgeois Given my primary stance as a practitioner, I will be using this opportunity to elaborate and expand on the questions that are triggered as a result of my art. Within this paper, I will attempt to situate those concerns in a broader conversation, and discuss Why I Never Became a Dancer by Tracey Emin. In terms of my own practice, I have always situated my painting in a post-abstract expressionist dialogue, where I have deliberately chosen to discuss my work in academic terms, addressing the relationship between the abstract and the representational or the expansion of the traditional disciplinary boundaries of painting into an interdisciplinary space. While the formal, I have been very successful in articulating; I feel in the case of the content, I have not been as forthright. The answers lie in the chair, which for me, as a symbol and motif, continues to resurface even in the abstract. The initial inspiration and later fascination came when I first came across a music video by Madonna, Human Nature, where she responds to criticism of her strong use of sexual expression in her work, questioning the perceived openness towards sex in the US where express yourself, don t repress yourself is the central lyric. As a young person, I Figure 1 Untitled, 2007, Oil and Emulsion Paint on Canvas. Source: Author

2 Abdullah Qureshi 200 found myself drawn to sex as well, however not the act so much as the idea of it; an idea that did not in fact originate in my adolescence but rather in my childhood. Figure 2 Untitled, 2009, Oil and Emulsion Paint on Canvas. Source: Author I found myself, unconsciously and later subconsciously, accessing my past and re-presenting it in painting. None of this was ever explicit, however, I found myself engaging with practice in a therapeutic manner, where on reflection, it seems as if it was a case of the organ healing itself. I have debated about how to discuss this for quite some time, as I feared addressing the work in the context of a very specific biography would limit its reading to just that. These memories that I talk about are deep, dark and cold and the experience, often an overwhelmingly psychological one. The question that arose was could any particular memory ever be recreated for the other? Would the audience really ever be able to experience it? Or was this a case of my seeking validation that all this that I was thinking was true -- that it happened and was not just my imagination. In addition to chairs, I found myself creating images of other interior objects as well. Drawers, beds and doors kept recurring. When looking at contemporary art and the use of the personal, the prominent British artist, Tracey Emin, is an example of a practitioner who has extensively employed the emotional and traumatic moments of her life, translating them into a variety of forms, including monoprints, quilt-like wall hangings, neon texts as well as video. Through her work, Emin has addressed rape, her abortions as well as strong expressions of feelings such as love, hate, anger as well as desire. For instance, one of her iconic works, Everyone I ve Ever Slept With , which was a tent appliqued with the 102 names of people she had slept with, not exclusively sexual partners but family members such as her grandmother as well, with whom she had shared a bed. It also included names of her aborted children.

3 201 THAAP Journal 2015: Culture, Art & Architecture of the Marginalized & the Poor Figure 3 Tracey Emin, Everyone I have Ever Slept With This very direct and personal approach to art making, in the case of Emin aggressive as well, can be seen as cathartic, where the artist seems to be resolving and reconciling the traumatic past and dealing with its impact and residue in the present. Reflecting on the introductory quotation, Louise Bourgeois is another example of a practitioner who has engaged with a painful autobiography. However, in contrast to Emin, it seems the process is much more psychoanalytic, where for instance, her sculptures have often taken the form of phallic objects or an entire series of works titled Cells. As a case in hand, we can look at Destruction of the Father (1974), a biographical piece that explores the power dominance of the father and his offspring. Visually it re-creates a childhood fantasy that she and her siblings had of devouring their father on the dinner table as revenge for having a mistress. Figure 4 Louise Bourgeois, Cell XXV (The View of the World of the Jealous Wife) In terms of reception, in an interview with Donald Kuspit, Bourgeois said, I never never! get people to understand what I mean. I want them to understand tenacity as a virtue, as an end in itself. More than that, they

4 Abdullah Qureshi 202 must understand that I had to equate sex and murder, sex and death. They could never understand the problem of this equation. Further highlighting the psychoanalytic purpose of making these works, the access to the unconscious comes across as addictive and an honor, as is evident in the statement, Art is a privilege, a blessing, a relief. The making itself is a primary impulse, where the translation of content is occurring in symbolic ways. Emin s work, in contrast, can be seen as more directly viewer engaging, where the use of both text and speech is employed to express certain ideas and points of view. Aiming to get it literally across. For instance, when we look at Why I Never Became a Dancer, from 1995, Emin begins with school, talking about how she never liked it, how she was always late and in fact hated it. Leaving it at thirteen, she instead spent time exploring her hometown, Margate at cafes, bars, the clock tower, the beach and sex. She says that it was something you could just do and it was free. She acknowledges the men being older than her; however it was something that did not matter to her at the time. Addressing how at times it gave a sense of power and at other times not. Sometimes she was just left there. She acknowledges the abuse by saying, the reasons why these men wanted to fuck me, a girl of 14, was because they weren t men. They were less. Less than human, they were pathetic. Sex, for me had been an adventure. A learning. I was the innocent. Some wild escape, from all the shit that surrounded me. After having experienced it all, she aspired to become a dancer, where she took part in a local dance competition, with the hope of winning and making her way out of the town that was now too small for her. However, this dream was cut short, when a gang of boys, most of whom she had slept with, started calling her names. And as I started to dance people started to clap I was going to win and then I was out of here Nothing could stop me And then they started SLAG SLAG SLAG (Words from the video narrated by the artist, quoted in Brown, p. 29)

5 203 THAAP Journal 2015: Culture, Art & Architecture of the Marginalized & the Poor At that point, humiliated by the boys, she could not hear the music any more, the clapping and chanting people faded and she ran off the dance floor, deciding it was time to leave. The video concludes with Emin dancing in a large empty room to, You make me feel (Mighty real) by Sylvester, with the voiceover, Shane, Eddy, Tony, Doug, Richard this one s for you. The joyful dancing, where Emin is twirling, can be seen as symbolic to her spinning out of their reach, where she confronts the abuse as well as the humiliation, turning it ultimately into a positive event, where the past seems to be just that -- the past. Within my own work, the past has played a significant role as well, where I have used the medium as a vessel to articulate emotions that I wished to expel. While the way I read my own paintings, on a personal level, would be like Emin, I see it all. However, if one is to look at these more objectively, there is a psychoanalytic relationship that has been at play, similar to the philosophy of Bourgeois. As she once said, Every day you have to abandon your past or accept it and then, if you cannot accept it, you become a sculptor. If it was acceptable, would not we be able to forget it? There seems the need to go over it, almost revisiting the memories to alter them, somehow making them palatable. Art is not about art. Art is about life and that about sums it up. Louise Bourgeois