To Touch the Body of the Word |

work of

regarding the

AHMED MATER

I remember I remember the sound Of ringing like the athan of prayer In narrow road of village It was the sign of clear sky Like predicted rain without cloud I leaf the door prevaricator I remember All deferred things are NOW1

Ahmed Mater (Abha, Saudi Arabiaa, 1979) has declared that his pieces discuss the rampant confusion which floods contemporary existence. His hands, the hands of a physician, know how to treat the body as much as they know how to articulate elegantand at times politically ironic multimedia visual compositions which speak about the body. Due to the knowledge that has facilitated his professional development, Mater not only understands, but lives in and between the distance that words create in relation to physicality and its substances; words and sentences in front of which the body attempts to defend itself, and on occasion, even fight against. Much has been writtenespecially since the 90sabout the distance and relationship that exists between the body and its discourse. Regarding this issue, historians and theorists of contemporary art have found corollary and have drawn heavily from other disciplines such as Literary Studies, Critical Theory, Anthropology, Sociology, Gender Studies, and Biomedical Science... The listing of interdisciplinary bifurcations could go on forever if not for one particular reason: we are incapable of escaping our own bodies.

Text cited from http://blog.ahmedmater.com/?page_id=242

Matter and Memorysuch is the name of one of Henri Bergsons most notable studiesa scholarly, poetic and condensed form of saying that which we are with absolute efficiency and unspoken clarity. It is also what the works by this talented contemporary Saudi Arabian artist discusses. His series Illuminations proposes a sensible dialogue between these two operative valences of human existencematter and memoryregarding the unseen reminiscence of the body exposed to the bone. The pages in these works which recuperate the illuminative tradition of Islamic religious manuscripts, constitute the initial balance in the welcome to a universe constructed from the word. Situated at its center exists, not a calligraphic game, but the representative source of a universal singularitythe skeleton as that which provides schematic order. Mater utilizes his patients poorly taken, poorly focused and disposed of x-rays in order to confer a quietly seductive visual elaboration of his environment, while distilling elements from painting and Arabic calligraphy.

Ahmed Mater. Illumination Series. 2009.

Ceremoniously preparing the body of the canvas like he does a body facing the possibility of death before a surgery, Mater soaks his cloths with dyes of Culin, coffee and pomegranate juice. The specific weight and absorption of these aqueous mixtures which bestow themselves on the canvas surface allow the accumulated time of tradition prevails over the present. By recuperating this artisanal process, the artist wishes to bring to his surfaces the luminosity that had been ancestrally achieved on paper. Maters work is strongly related to his cultural roots as much as its gaze and understanding are rooted in the inner functioning of the body.

Ahmed Mater. Illumination Series. 2009.

Accustomed to hearing the silences and rumors of the living and sick organism, Ahmed Mater replicates the bodys tenors in an exposed condition as the process of elaboration in each of his pieces. Even if one is ignorant of the meanings behind the writings (perhaps only knowing that in his works he replicates religious texts and traditional medical texts such as the Koran and the famous anatomical study by Henry Gray in 1918)2, there exists an undeniable voice in his x-ray images and his calligraphic contours which is visible by every gaze independent of ones context and cultural baggage. Converting the central space designated for recitations in traditional manuscripts, the core in Maters pieces is replaced by the images of light created by common x-rays. The principal plane, commonly reserved in other conditions and contexts for the reflection upon knowledge and truth in the form of the written word, has been re-designed, in Maters works, to privilege the enunciation of anonymous torsos. It is an affront on the non-representative order of the world in Islam. The cranium and the vertebral column which is surrounded by the scapula and the rib cage are found in axis with the clavicles and the initial articulations of the humerus. These are the traces of his center pieces which govern placement and dimension. Matter rewrites, remembers and recuperates teachings and knowledge of other times and other hands over the borders of these images. It is the exercise of his medical practice which is at play when this act over the other body takes place. This act comes from intuition, dexterity and assimilated knowledge of the body itself. It is a respectful and decisive act like that of a surgeon; aware and precise like that of a specialist; articulate and aesthetic like that of a man whose vital impulse reverberates in the work of art. How is the relation between medical and

Participating perhaps in a slow secularization of Koranic Texts, a prognosis for the artist of the future in a world destroyed by falsifications and interpretations of the Koran as thought by Dr. Georg Gugelberger. (personal communication, June 7, 2010)

religious discourse established regarding the body as representation of a basic structure? What kind of findings are to be encountered in the vital pulsations are contained in these x-ray images as calligraphic tracing? Does an essential memory about matter remain in them? Let us examine just one example in order to scrutinize the order of these relations. As already mentioned, the scripture surrounding the radiographic torsos of Ahmed Mater is a direct appropriation of Arabic tracings originally found in religious manuscripts. Among them exists those symbols that appear in religious teachings indicating the obligated times of reverence which serve as pause and link between prayer and the active gestures of the body. The appearance of these calligrams on the borders of his images conduces and destines the posturenot of the body whose image delineates from a distancebut of ones own body. This body, which is that of the spectator, finds reference in the work of an intimate action accustomed to time in praise and worship. Now, (un)reverential in front of the image in the space of a gallery, the anticipating organism seems almost obliged to ignore its instructions, overlooking the traditional mandate of remaining on foot in front of the work and in front of an exposed body whose non-functioning image now serves as an uncertain window to the conditions of his/her past. In this disagreement generated from the displaced space and time of this cultural referent as scriptural/corporeal ordering, Mater unravels the possibility of signaling the veils that spin across the different textures between the knowledge of the body and its factual experienced reality.

Ahmed Mater. Illumination Series. 2009.

Reviewing the relationship between the body and its representative materiality in Yves Kleins blue body prints as well as over the tracks of

Ana Mendietas earth-bodiesjust to suggest some possible links with western art history from where this pen and gaze manifestthe skeletal overexposures of Mater make the body (in its barest self-presentation and nudity) a state of virtual impression whose evidence makes one aware of the forms of a technological touch onto a virtually untouched body which is nevertheless deeply violated.

Ana Mendieta. Silueta Works in Mexico.1973-78.

Yves Klein. Untitled Anthropometry. 1960.

Mater confronts the subtle violence of this penetrated relationship and the unknown between the sick body and its diagnosis in one of his best works to date: Prognosis. Like the piece of carbon paper which has been violated one and a thousand times by the imprint of dozens of clinical prescriptions citing the destiny of many naked men and women at the mercy of what those very lines say, Maters piece operates as if sharing the ever shameful silence that revolves around the confession in its diagnosis and its sentence. Like phantasmagoric traits, the words covering the paper compose a saturated and vainly legible landscape trivializing (without a lack of a certain cruelty) one of the most symbolic and operatively dense medical ritualsthe writing and rendering of the prognosis.

Ahmed Mater. Prognosis. 2009.

Anticipating the obliteration of hope over the promise of discovering a cure is that which exasperates the written diagnosis. With the irreversible weight of a penitent body, a pair of anxious hands await the prognosis receptacle of its own anticipated futurehoping to become, at the very least, almost resolved amongst some names, quantities and doses. The Prognosis by Ahmend Mater whose opaque layers hide its own symbology condenses this fearful process of discursive structure. In its place, the doctor-artist decides to follow the shadows of those other bodies which already have been or are still waiting to be confirmed in order to submit to us the remains of a common memory. It is the memory of a healthy body that, even when given a fatal diagnosis, still attempts to remember itself.

Marcela Quiroz Luna

Marcela Quiroz Luna (Mxico City, 1974) | Art Historian with a M.A. in Art Studies at Universidad Iberoamericana (Santa Fe, MX). Researcher and independent curator, in 2007 she publishes the book: La ilusin de ser fotgrafo. Hacia una fenomenologa de la fotografa estenopeica a partir de la obra de Carlos Jurado (The llusion of Being a Photographer. Towards a Phenomenology of

Pinhole Photography based on the Work of Carlos Jurado . She has participated in forums and dictated conferences in the School of Architecture at UNAM; Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa; Universidad Iberoamericana Santa Fe; and Universidad Autnoma de Baja California, among other spaces. She writes periodically in various art and cultural criticism publications such as Curare, Art Nexus, Fahrenheit and salonkritk. Editor and translator for various museums in Mexico and the United States amongst them Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporneo and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. As a grantee of the Fundacin/Coleccin Jumex she is currently completing her fourth year in her PhD in Critical Theory in 17, Instituto de Estudios Crticos with the research study: La escritura, el cuerpo y su desaparicin en la obra de Song Dong y Safaa Fathy (Writing, the Body, and its Disappearance in the Work of Song Dong and Safaa Fathy). Curatorial Director of Art San Diego 2010 (San Diego, CA), her most recent curatorial projects include the contemporary art exhibition distancia relativa (relative distance) for entijuanarte09 (Tijuana, BC) and confes(s)ion(e)s for JAUS (Los Angeles, CA, July 2010). Since 2004 she lives and works in Tijuana, Mexico.