An-nisa Visit to the NPG (1)
Saturday’s session at NPG with An-nisa was a lot more satisfying than Friday. Five girls came, with Humera and we had a full day. We began with a warm -up, doing I minute portraits in pairs of each other, the first with eyes open, then eyes closed, then with the left/non-dominant hand. We then looked at which ones we preferred, which is always a surprise and I think it got them focused on really looking. This related to an activity we did in the BP Portrait Award Gallery at the end of the day, where I paired them up and asked one to take the arm of the other who would close their eyes. The ‘seeing’ one would then direct the ‘non-seeing’ one to a portrait they were drawn to, and describe in as much detail as possible what they saw. After a few minutes, the ‘non-seeing’ partner would open her eyes and they discussed the imagined image in comparison to the real one. I asked them to focus on work that had objects in them, as the Gallery tour that Peta did had this emphasis, since I am building up to the contribution and wrapping of personal objects for their last session next week.
Again, Peta created a brilliant path through the chosen works (which I mentioned in my last entry on the Paiwand visit). Marc Quinn’s ‘Self’ was controversial (of course) – getting a traditional Muslim perspective on this underlines some of the context that goes with this project, the questioning of the very notion of the individual and it’s depicted image. Also, the perceived over-emphasis on the physical aspect of self with works like this and lack of attention to what is believed to be beyond the physical.
Comments on ‘Self’ from the group ;
‘…It depends if you put the human being at the centre of everything and you don’t see the human being as part of a wider creation’
‘He has a god -like image of self…ego…’
‘if you’re using your blood in that way, it loses its sacredness,,,’ ‘ It’s part of god created nature, you’re not supposed to use it in that w ay…’
‘You don’t hold onto life because death is a natural part of creation’ .It sounds like the traditional view is that death isn’t fetishised in the same way , it;s seen as a natural part of the cycle of existence. This also came out when looking at the BP Winner, the ‘Last Portrait of Mother’ by Daphne Todd ; ‘Death and grief different in Islamic culture’. ‘ Her physical body is not her. Spirit departs, you focus on the spirit, the body returns to earth, gets recycled’ . ‘Why didn’t she cover her up more?’
