2014-Interview with Judith Bihr – PhD research, University of Cologne, Germany

Interview with Judith Bihr for her PhD research, University of Cologne, Germany, 2014

JB – As we already discussed, I would like to mainly focus on your painting practice. I would like to have a general overview of your artistic strategy and development, starting with the Batman-Anubis and closing with your two exhibitions “Stockholm Syndrome” and “Moving forward by the day”. 

KH – Well, I started appropriating images from Western advertising and metamorphosing them into ancient forms and deities (goddesses and gods) as early as 1995. Prior to that I was an abstract painter, though I had trained traditionally on figure, landscape and still life painting. The use of collaged printed figures from advertising and fashion magazines was my attempt at the time to re-enter figuration. Around that time I used also ancient symbology–and ancient here does not mean only ancient Egyptian, but form other ancient civilizations, including prehistoric cave and rock art, and you see a lot of those in the project Philadelphia Chromosome in 2005, ten years after my first adoption of “collaged metamorphosed figuration” if we can describe it that way. It was around 1996 that I discovered that Anubis and Batman look identical except from profile: naked torso, muscular figure with six-packs, shorts, power position, and even they assumed the same function, which is protection against evil. This discovery as I painted and metamorphosed the male models extracted from bodybuilding magazines into Anubis led to another discovery: Basted, the cute woman with a mask of a cat, and Catwoman, and also Sekhmet, the goddess of war with the mask of a lioness. I started then using female figures from fashion magazines to metamorphose them into the female deities, and then as I worked more figures were transformed. I think we can talk about this process as “metamorphosing deja-vu globalized iconography”. I still resort to this process in my work sometimes today. I must say that the start was my inspiration from the great Robert Rauschenberg’s process of image transfer. I think if Andy Warhol is a genius in terms of his the way to the re-use of press photojournalism, fashion, glamour, advertising and other found imagery to use in artworks, Robert Rauschenberg’s astounding genius is in his influence on generations of artists who came after him as he was offered more freedom in trans-genre and interdisciplinary studio practice, he was all: a painter, mixed media artist and a brilliant photographer, and he had a complex and versatile arsenal of both concepts and techniques. I feel always inspired when I paint and I always have Rauschenberg in mind, as I developed my own very personal techniques and process due to my lack of knowledge of Rauschenberg’s alchemy. I have my own alchemy formulae today, and I am mentoring younger peers in my studio to develop theirs. This –to answer your question—would be my strategy: a lot of studying, source inspiration, a lot of hard work and experimentation on canvas, a lot of thinking and along the way a lot of serendipity, i.e. discovering great things by accident, that will help eventually develop a personal visual language.

JB – Probably for a following of my main analysis in detail, I would like to focus on your painting “Book of Flight” (2010). What would be a 3-4 sentences statement description of that work? And what does the title of the work mean to you? Is it an appropriation and transformation of the Book of the Dead?

KH – The book of flight is a unique work of 250 cm vertical by 600 horizontal and it consists of five connected canvases. I can here talk about two aspects of my process: the “making of process” and the visual concept behind. This canvas is unique in terms of its “process of painting it”. I painted this large canvas in my old studio that was only 130 square meters, a space that hosted 4000 books and at least 200 canvases plus inspiration objects collected over two decades from flea markets and antique shops. I had no way to paint a canvas of that size. My capacity was always to make the largest standard canvas of 250 x 200 cm, with a 250cm maximum horizontal surface and a 200cm a maximum height, as those were the maximum dimensions to allow a stretched painting in and out of the studio door. To create a canvas of The Book of Flight needed some creative thought. Let me tell you that I never saw this work at all assembled in my studio, and the first time I saw the whole work assembled was at the booth of the gallery in Art Dubai 2010, two weeks after the work was finished. While painting it, I always had to see two adjacent canvases at any one time, then I would photograph each piece, and assemble the canvases on the computer Photoshop to see where I would connect the elements and what to add and what to take off. Then on the real canvas I would apply my decision taken earlier on the computer. This was my first time to use software to guide me in further steps in the painting process. Today in my new studio I do not need to do that anymore as I have five times the painting space I had in 2010.

The concept of the work is derived from an obsession for the past decade to actually try to decipher the ancient Egyptian wall. The ancient Egyptian murals were exclusively for tombs, provided that there were painted relief murals in temples that serve other functions. But the painting as we know it today –invented by ancient Egyptians 3200 years BC—kept its strict laws of graphism and flatness for three millennia, in my opinion to keep the focus on the narrative. On the walls, the painted visual narrative was confirmed by the use of text, exactly as performed and advised in the sciences of marketing communications today: if you want to enforce a message, pass it through visuals and through text at the same time. The book of the dead as a phenomenon we can understand today simply in the analogy of placing a sacred book, bible or a Koran with the deceased in her/his coffin. Jus the Egyptians did it the way they knew best: text illustrating images and images confirming text. I feel very comfortable painting large surfaces, as this allows me much more space to tell stories, and I like to see myself as a storyteller across all mediums I use, especially video and painting. In video, I think I am more of a filmmaker than a video artist, and in painting, I like to paint what I think I know more than what I see. 

If I would describe that work, I would say “I am trying to create an illusion of an ancient mural that the viewer would think that s/he knows every bit of, and that all visual elements in this mural –all deja-vu– are invasive enough and intimate enough to represent each of us.”

JB – German art historian Markus Brüderlin writes about repetition: If a symbol is represented in a repetitive way, it looses its former meaning and becomes a kind of ornament. So, repetition can be described in this concept as a critical strategy that reflects the meaning of a symbol/figure in a special context. Repetition could serve as a form of emphasis a special meaning, but it can also refer to the depiction of repeated circles of power and violence especially when it comes to your depiction of snipers and tanks. As I focus in my work on repetition, I would like to ask you about your strategic use of repetitive forms in your paintings. What does repetition mean for you? Is it for you a tool of reflection?

KH – Repetition of the one unit is falsely described in Arabic critical theory as an Islamic solution to avoiding figuration. Repetition of the unit is an ancient practice, in painting, drawing and sculpture. You see is in ancient Asian art as much as you see it in ancient Egyptian painting and painter reliefs. Brüderlin theory applies perhaps to modern symbology or modern approaches to unexplained repetitions. In ancient Egyptian painting and painted reliefs it denoted exaggeration like scenes of war, prisoners, armies, public works and national large-scale projects like builders and mason teams, dancers, farm animal procession, etc. there is exaggeration to denote scale, there is rhythm to denote awesome sound, and all sorts of possible visual and sound effects that would serve and enhance the narrative, and this is what I try to simulate. I have the repeated element of tulips to denote sensuality, sexuality and metamorphoses. I use in repetition the figure of the runner to denote movement, rhythm/pace to serve my concept of “flight: flight as escape, flight as climbing, flight as physical flying or metaphorical flying as forced migration. Flight also represents fear especially when linked with my simulated hieroglyphs based on military iconography.  In Arabic language critical text, Islamic art is much linked to “art in general”, and many critics came from Islamic art history backgrounds, and there is an almost established belief that the repetition of the one unit is linked to Sufism and Sufi practices. There is some literature about the repetition of the unit and the repetition of swirling movement in Sufi dance. Honestly, I think such hypothesis lack solid foundations, and I personally think it started as speculation and throughout time became belief. I cannot se the link, and I think repetition existed for various reasons the same day man decided to communicate in symbols.

JB – Do you see your use of repetition as a kind of critical form? What does the repetition mean e.g. in your repetitive representation of Umm Kulthum, Hathor, and/or the runner or the snipers? Does the strategy differ in each case?

KH – Well, all my elements bear symbolic representation to an idea. Umm Kulthum represents secular progressive clean and fragranced Egypt, a time where women and men looked up for life and everyone was ambitious to be a citizen of a modern world. A symbol lost today with over 80% of Egyptian women living in Egypt veiled, and with a religious discourse in the public sphere that favors death over life, and fosters aggression, violence and xenophobia, all within 25 years. This is not the case for Egyptian women outside the country. Hathur the goddess was the deity of entertainment, maternity, generosity, bounty and music. In my painting it represents a space that hosts everyone from every color and walk of life, and is tolerant to all. The runner represents the flight from the past to the future through a very fragile and obscure present. It is also a flight from one identity to another, as the Egyptian identity is rich and complex and has several layers that can provide safe haven for those who want to fly from one layer to the other.

JB – As for your concept of “anti-difference”, do you refer to Derrida’s model of deconstruction and his concept of différance that also criticizes in a certain way the dichotomous framework of language (language seen as a construction)?

KH – in the nineties I was fascinated by the deconstructivists, especially Ihab Hassan, Levi-Straus and Leotard. Perhaps Jacques Derrida was the most serious in approaching difference. I think the work of those philosophers was quite important when I was growing as a studio artist and I sought theoretical essay to attempt try understand how art functioned and could be described. Today I think such text is futile and hopeless in describing any art produced today. My evidence for this futility is how the role of critical text declined versus the super powerful role of the curator today. I think we need today a different critical discourse. 

For myself it is really simple: within each of us are auto-contradictions we are shattered by opposing dichotomies, yet we are all able to survive, which says something. I think within each of us is a unique formula for accepting the other and a certain need to communicate at all price. We also have survival genes that ignite aggression and violence towards the different other. As we grow up and fall within the educational machines in national systems, we lose those “apprehensive” behaviors towards the other, or in failing and degraded educational systems like those in the south of the planet, those apprehensive behaviors are amplified to violence, and at best case scenarios to gaps according to those falsely perceived differences. I personally believe that we need to address self-dichotomies, and always use only our chromosomes and genes of common grounds with the other, and totally “kill” (if we have too) the difference counterparts. It is a self-negotiation before it becomes proposed on the negotiation table. To me the term “anti-difference” transcends the standard effort of looking for common grounds with the other, to actually kill all possible difficulties to attain complete bridging, and I am sure of the results as we all have both sides of the dichotomy, we just need to use the proper bridging one.