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Lot Essay
Meera Huraiz's body of work visually documents the current changes through the use of local symbols fused with western narratives to create a new space for a harmonized discourse. Her work achieves the reconciliation of two historic binarized discourses through the literal act of sewing together past and present along with East and West in order to create a new language and mode of identification. The artist firmly presents herself as an Arab with a strong sense of national and cultural pride, and embraces today's globalized world influenced by American and European culture.
The refashioning of traditional garments and fabrics provides the basis of her visual vocabulary, enabling the artist to articulate her explorations. Huraiz uses appropriation as a method to convey her understanding of a globalized history of art, creating a fused and integrated visual vocabulary that enables her work to transcend to a wider public. Although the work she creates is not geared to an international audience at its conception, it is born out of a genuine necessity to explore themes and concerns that surround her, like the homogenization of culture and the imminent loss of identity. Huraiz's intent is to document the present evolution of Dubai's identity: in the physical, cultural and psychological realms.
The audience can only experience these performance pieces as photo-documentation. The costumes she designs operate as peepholes into a hypothesized future as they are hybrid versions of what Emirati culture might be like in years to come.
The medium the artist uses of assembling and disassembling of the "Burqa" stems directly from Picasso and Braque's collages. This deliberate construction and deconstruction creates new orders and relationships between the objects allowing new perceptions. Huraiz appropriates this modern concept to create and expose a personal interpretation of the current cultural changes that the artist perceives as an Emirati woman. She has reached a definition of formal visual thought through the creation and sewing together of different garments, as well as the facemasks, and sets where she places her models. The evocative use of metallic hues bestows the portraits a sense of exuberance enchanting the viewer with crispness of light and clarity of figures in the assembled garments she photographs.
The refashioning of traditional garments and fabrics provides the basis of her visual vocabulary, enabling the artist to articulate her explorations. Huraiz uses appropriation as a method to convey her understanding of a globalized history of art, creating a fused and integrated visual vocabulary that enables her work to transcend to a wider public. Although the work she creates is not geared to an international audience at its conception, it is born out of a genuine necessity to explore themes and concerns that surround her, like the homogenization of culture and the imminent loss of identity. Huraiz's intent is to document the present evolution of Dubai's identity: in the physical, cultural and psychological realms.
The audience can only experience these performance pieces as photo-documentation. The costumes she designs operate as peepholes into a hypothesized future as they are hybrid versions of what Emirati culture might be like in years to come.
The medium the artist uses of assembling and disassembling of the "Burqa" stems directly from Picasso and Braque's collages. This deliberate construction and deconstruction creates new orders and relationships between the objects allowing new perceptions. Huraiz appropriates this modern concept to create and expose a personal interpretation of the current cultural changes that the artist perceives as an Emirati woman. She has reached a definition of formal visual thought through the creation and sewing together of different garments, as well as the facemasks, and sets where she places her models. The evocative use of metallic hues bestows the portraits a sense of exuberance enchanting the viewer with crispness of light and clarity of figures in the assembled garments she photographs.