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Tanihsou
Mohamed-Saeed Omer
Artist Statement
In the last four years I was intensively searching for beads. I went on field trips, looked at picture books and through the internet web sites. I gathered information and looked at beads and their role in the African culture, focusing on my own region around the Valley of the River Nile. I visited museums in Sudan, Egypt and the United States searching and digging to see old beads and selected stones, which were found in graves of kings of the past. I studied them in order to touch the hidden aesthetic value that made them praised by people through out history. In my homeland country, Sudan, one kind of seeds "Laloubaa" which is well known for its attachment to Sufi’s spiritual long prayers, drew my attention to look at beads in the region.
In discovering the relation between past and present, artifacts and lifestyle, the remaining history and today's beauty standards, I found beads played a major role in being a fundamental beauty object for the people who lived in that area. In fact beads were the most popular trade items with Africans during the time before colonization.
African people give life and meaning to beads, seeds, shells, stones and small items by linking them to real life. In addition to decorating, coloring and beautifying the surface of the human body, beads fulfill the task of keeping essential memories of social relations. They are used in a creative fashions to tell stories of beauty, praise kings and ordinary people and give pride to heroes, mainly and mindfully by adhering them to their bodies.
In this series of reliefs and paintings I was inspired by the thousands of years of cultural practice of use of beads in Africa. There is immense stimulation in seeing and feeling the beauty of bodily accessories that are rooted deep in the culture, holding the same quality of beauty and artistic designs, and still revealing the same joy. I recalled the power of collecting, I collected some beads, necklaces and found items, overlapped them with colors, and attached them to the paintings. I was trying to get to the three dimensional beauty of these small sculptures and to explore the negative space that surrounds the beads. In a way, I did not want to remain technical and faithful to the known academic methods of delivery.
Mohamed-Saeed
New York, September 2009
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| Mixed Medium Relief on board |
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