A Different Perspective On Contemporary Art
A review on Trans Dance 14 Festival Opening
November 2014: DESTROY // CAIRO of Leyya Mona Tawil (USA/ Palestine/ Syria)
with: Mona Gamil, Mohamed El-Deep, Yasmine Kamel, and Cherif El Masri
“How aesthetic canons are shaped by ideology, and how shifts and ruptures in histories alter our views of beauty, contemporary, cultural superiority and identity is at the core of the festival. This festival thinks as it happens, and extends itself into unknown futures and on turbulent grounds. A festival that is shaped by the desire to dance and the knowledge of scarcity.”
Quote from Opening Description
Have you ever smiled at something beautiful? Anything that made you feel something instantly? Like a beautiful flower or a fashion detail that captivated you or a happy couple displaying affection publicly or even a cozy lighting on an alley. If you have then you can see beauty but the general norm of it, now forget about that and let’s examine a different kind of beauty and explore together feelings that actually need effort to be generated. Sort of like the difference between liking someone and desiring someone, intimacy is never an effortless notion and that’s exactly how I would like to describe what I saw that day on Rawabet’s Town House Theatre; intimate.
The show was part of an international dance festival named “Trans dance 14: Forever”, the performance was under a theme called "DESTROY” which was a challenge for the dancer to create a dance then totally destroy the choreography on stage. When a friend first invited me to go I was skeptical about going I really do but I have an issue with contemporary art, I never understand it and contemporary artists never help me figure it out to the extent that sometimes I feel like they don’t really understand it either but they just do it as a sort of expression which is fine but I won’t be calling art because it never moved me however if it moves them it’s their type of art. And boy was I foolish.
Having expectations is the worst thing you can feel towards art, one should actually clear his head and purify his heart ready for a renaissance in front of any sort of art display. On that day I happened to be ready to receive so I sat there waiting for a new experience and shot to try and get my head around this thing I once thought was none sense. The dance started by steady continuous movement on one loud and depressing piece of music, I got bored after 10 minutes then I started dosing off with my mind about the meaning of repetition and how meditative it was, I then felt calm. Then the dancers started to move differently with curvy sways then careless ones; it seemed like my relationship with life, how I am very excited then lose interest, part of the duality of life I never really liked. The amount of effort they were putting into body movement made me feel for their muscles and think more about the capabilities of our human bodies, then how easily it was for them to literally destroy the dance carelessly like they had no fear in the world was just a huge encouraging reassuring boost to my insecurities. And just like that 40 minutes passed of the loudest and deepest music I have ever heard along with 3 dancers shaping my feelings on the go, it made me feel hypnotized and thought provoked. Sometimes at ease, then suddenly angry, then having a difficulty of letting go of such feelings and finally hypnotized and cleansed of all of it to re-watch the beautiful and soothing effect of repetition in their performance; I can’t even describe how liberating it was to keep building and destroying thoughts and feelings on the spot. All I can say is that I got inspired to paint for the first time of my life and so did I.
And now when I think about it, the issue was never contemporary art or event the artists, the real issue is that we live in a complicated world that forces our minds to retreat to an emotional state where we perceive comfort as a source of beauty even though it could be exactly the other way round. I once had a conversation with a curator friend of mine about the importance of beauty and she said “Of course it is important, with beauty comes relaxation”. At the time I agreed but now if you ask me what I would prefer, would rather see art that stimulates my mind before my feelings I’d rather be exhausted than relaxed, I’d rather make this effort, I’d rather be intimate with art than just like it.
Thank You to the most amazing people and thank you for the intriguing type of art you perform and promote. Keep it up and move my mind.
This painting is dedicated to all of you.