Behind the title of Joanna Seikaly's current exhibition, Colour your Mind, lies a double reference: to the feel of the exhibit itself, and to the state of mind she's arrived at that she tries to encourage in her public.
"By 'colour your mind'", Seikaly explains, "I mean open your mind, feel free to think any way you want. Many people are very conservative in their artistic tastes: I would like them to see beyond and take their imagination one step further." A step that she took for her own career recently: "I used to force myself to stick to one theme for long periods of time, but last year I decided to change and now I paint what I feel like, depending on the music I'm listening to, my mood, what I absorbed during the year – it's more personal that way. I have more room to breathe." In fact, it's impossible to miss the resemblance between Seikaly's youthfulness in looks and manners, and the similar brightness of her palette and subject matter.
Part of the exhibit consists in representations of animals – birds, butterflies – in a style that is child-like yet not childish, often accompanied by their alter ego in painted metal cut out by the artist herself. "Working in 3d is fun", she smiles. The fish in the bowl are particularly interesting in that they somewhat carry the key to the exhibit: though rationally "in" the bowl, they are painted over it with great freedom, as if there was no point in visually restricting oneself when the subject is so easily recognizable.
The fish straddle the line between the animal series and the other group of works, which represent human figures, most of them women, deconstructed and reassembled – a direct reference to Picasso, whom Seikaly explains is her favourite artist of current years. Yet with these pleasant bright colours and curved shapes, we are far from the harshness of Picasso's or Braque's Cubism. "You could call it a soft Cubism," Seikaly agrees. She goes on to explain that her style migrated naturally, not out of a deliberate effort, in this direction over more than 6 years. She says very little about the individual pieces as, she confides with a smile, "I like not revealing everything, so that people can make their own interpretations."
Given Seikaly's new, unconstrained approach, the one coherent element in the group of works exhibited is colour: bright and pastel hues, with very few browns and a quasi-absence of dark colours. This is again a variation from Seikaly's usual strong colours due to the ethnic contents of her subject matter, but it still carries the artist's bright outlook on life. "I love making people smile", she says. "The exhibit is happy, it's positive, so visitors come out wearing a smile on their face and that's what I wish for."
Seikaly's work has enjoyed a good response in Lebanon, where the public is more open to this kind of style now, she says. Yet one thing bothers he: "The creative process I not taken seriously. I pour my soul into my work: when I paint I need to cut myself off from the world, sometimes for weeks. People don't understand that and keep trying to pull me away from it to go out or whatever. I wish I could make them feel what I go through to produce a piece."
She makes it clear that she paints for the sake of painting, not for sales or a public. "The public always expects a story to be there, but I don't feel like doing this anymore." Indeed this past year represents a breakthrough for her as she freed herself from her own self-imposed restrictions. The young woman who travelled as far as Kenya and the Philippines to research her subject matter and paint the world, is now painting her own inner world and personal journeys: "I'm going to go on like this, because I'm much happier now, my hand is much looser. I am blooming."
Colour Your Mind is exhibited at Espace SD from October 23 to November 15. Tel: 01 563114.
Joanna Seikaly's website: www.joannaseikaly.com
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Article by Joumana Medlej |