Art, diplomatically deployed

ABOVE a busy roundabout in Hawalli, a suburb of Kuwait, loom four giant but subtle photographs about Arab identity and placelessness by Tarek Al-Ghoussein. A Palestinian photographer originally from Kuwait, Mr Al-Ghoussein has exhibited widely, but this is the first time his work has been seen in the country of his birth. Kuwaitis and Palestinians have a chequered past. Decades of relative harmony between the two peoples were soured when Yasser Arafat, as head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, applauded Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Since then, the Palestinian population in Kuwait has dwindled from nearly half a million to around 40,000.
Mr Al-Ghoussein is best known for a series of self-portraits that are too politically sensitive to be shown on billboards in a conservative sovereign state like Kuwait. In these works, the artist wears the ideologically loaded black-checkered "kufiya" scarf while walking through different environments, such as airports, shipyards, ruined buildings and shooting ranges. "I was just so fed up with the media representation of Palestinians and Arabs as terrorists," he explains. Viewers of the self-portraits often feel an initial frisson of alarm, then a range of emotions including "a strong sense of urgency...a poetic stillness...a lost heroism...a feeling of failure that is almost comedic," as Emily Jacir, a fellow Palestinian artist, has observed.
Shooting the series was not without political incident. The artist recalls driving with a friend from Amman to Petra along the Dead Sea. "All of a sudden, I saw this patch of land on the other side of the water," says Mr Al-Ghoussein, who had never seen Palestine before. (Kuwaiti passport holders cannot enter Israel or its occupied territories because the two countries don't have diplomatic relations.) "It was so overwhelming, so beautiful, so calm. I had to take a picture," he says. So he took out his tripod, wrapped his head in his kufiya, and made the most contemplative image in his Self-Portrait series. When he returned to his car, the Jordanian police were waiting. They suspected him of making a suicide video or somesuch and took him in for questioning. He was then grilled by the Mukhabarat secret service. "Who are you? Why are you doing this? You work for Brothers of Islam?" The fact that he was an artist working on a photographic series about Palestinian identity fell on deaf ears. "I realised the scarf was not only a symbol in the West," says Mr Al-Ghoussein, "but a potent symbol in the Arab world."
For the past 12 years, Mr Al-Ghoussein has been living in faculty housing at the American University of Sharjah. With its mini-state-capital buildings and pristine grass lawns, this campus offers a marked contrast to the mosque-dominated sand dunes of the emirate. At first glance, the university seems to have been beamed over from Washington DC. Mr Al-Ghoussein is an influential teacher, having instructed many young members of the extended royal family of Sharjah as well as Lamya Gargash, an artist who represented the UAE at the Venice Biennale in 2009. His pedagogical style is nuanced but invariably starts with advice on avoiding kitsch. "No sunsets, no camels, no portraits of pets," he says with a laugh.
Once a photojournalist, Mr Al-Ghoussein abandoned documentary work after an extensive stint shooting Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan. He felt he wasn't getting at the psychological and emotional heart of his subjects. "Robert Frank could do it," he says, referring to the Swiss-American documentary photographer, "but not me." He felt so defeated that he took a five-year break from photography, only returning to it with his self-portraits.
Since completing the Self-Portrait series, Mr Al-Ghoussein has abandoned the kufiya in order to make images that are more open-ended and inclusive. In a global world of increasing immigration and expatriation, "home" is a complicated idea for many people. This is something about which Mr Al-Ghoussein is particularly aware in his adopted home of the UAE, where foreigners far outnumber Emiratis.
These later works tend to be shot in anonymous stretches of desert—at crossroads, in roundabouts, between walls—sometimes with great expanses of blue tarpaulin or green synthetic mesh. His themes have taken a more existential turn, as if the artist were grasping at a place in the universe rather than just a legitimate geopolitical location. Some have a certain "Waiting for Godot" longing about them. So, does the artist believe in the Almighty? Mr Al-Ghoussein loathes talking about religion. "Yes," he admits, "But it's such a personal thing. There are so many interpretations, assumptions, prejudices, so much baggage associated."
Mr Al-Ghoussein's billboards will be on view in Kuwait until the end of April. They are the second instalment in a series of four art projects by Palestinians that includes Khalil Rabah, Jack Persekian and Tarek Atoui. Instigated and underwritten by Rana Sadik, a collector and philanthropist of Palestinian descent, the series is arranged to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Kuwait's independence and the 20th anniversary of its liberation from Iraq.
"The billboards are a way to remind people on both sides of the positive historical relationship between Palestinians and Kuwaitis," said Abdulaziz Al-Mulla, a board member of the Kuwait Graduates Society, an organisation of some 5,000 members. Interestingly, the artist's father was Ambassador to America in the 1960s and instrumental in getting Kuwait into the United Nations. So it is apposite that Mr Al-Ghoussein's photographs have been given such a cordial diplomatic role.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2011/04/tarek_al-ghoussein