Amma Baad

Amma Baad
Solo Show
Delfina Foundation
London, UK

2 July - 10 August 2019

Curatorial Statement

Amma Baad continues Nasser Al Salem’s expansive approach to the practice of Arabic calligraphy, testing the formal possibilities of the tradition to enfold and enact complex conceptual experiments. In this new series, Al Salem contemplates the Arabic phrase ‘amma baad’, an expression that has no entirely satisfactory equivalent in the English language. Often found in formal written correspondence, the phrase gains meaning through function, following initial salutations and greetings, while preceding – and perhaps anticipating – the main subject or story to follow. Meaning, loosely, ‘henceforth’ or ‘as to what comes after’, it is dense with expectations. Through calligraphic manipulations, Al Salem explores the potential of the phrase’s peculiar space-time; the idiom synthesises timeframes, pivoting thought from one moment, one place, to the next. A formal flourish, it implies deferral, creating a liminal place of pause. In experimental meditations in sculpture and on paper, Al Salem expands and collapses conceptions of spatial and temporal order, imagining new dimensions where possible alternatives to the here and now exist.

In 27 (2019), Al Salem shapes the tonal and gestural presence of the idiom to explore its potential. Twenty-seven phonetic renderings transpose the word from written formality into experimental records of its pronunciation, making the expression and its affect manifold. In the dimensions suggested by these iterations of ‘amma baad’, it becomes a place to give pause; like a well-placed rest note in a symphony, it resounds with emphasis – a quiet inflexion clarifying what stands before and after.

The present is a contested state of flux, technology and socio-political orders enacting restless and relentless change. Whether it is the pace of transformation that has increased, or merely our conception of it, this is an age of simultaneity. Noise obliterates the space between past and future, instigating a hurtling loss of sequentiality. Time converges to diminish the present. These experiments in calligraphy – an art of expansion, grounded in geometry and the spirituality – attempt to structure new possibilities amid this disorder. Al Salem reintroduces space and time, as in Simultaneity (2019) which carries the current of this age of constancy, while encompassing expansive potential. Simultaneity 2 (2019) uses thuluth script and the action of reflection to introduce a slight deferral and separation. The phrase is enfolded within the letter ع to gesture powerfully within and beyond itself, encompassing before and after in a single compacted expression to suggest ways to move beyond the conventional sequencing of time.

In particular, the works articulate varied reflections on the exponential changes that are reshaping Saudi society, each piece a still point that unfurls a gesture through time and space – to what has been and towards what lies ahead. Through contortions and experiments in two and three dimensions, Al Salem telescopes the monumentality of historical time into the rapid convulsions of the present, opening and contracting spaces to question – ‘what follows?’ and ‘what else?’. After a long

duration of a delimited status quo, the kingdom now experiences a moment of transformation. Many of the changes congregate around Vision 2030, a long-range strategic plan set to diversify the economy and reconfigure vast swathes of daily life. Saudis today exist in this space in-between, after what has come before, but still waiting, with bated breath for rapid action of the present to subside and the future to take form.

Illuminating the structures of the moment, Al Salem reveals the agency we have in bringing potential futures into existence. An arsenal of new conceptions, the works are means and modes to approach the simultaneity of the present. Playing with scale and materials, the artist’s manipulations of the idiom seeks to challenge and expand our perceptions of time and space, inviting reflection on the present, as well as what might follow ‘amma baad’. Dramatically shifting scales and eliding dimensions, he draws attention to the mechanisms of quantification, contracting and negotiating space in 1 km x 1 km (2019) and expanding an enfolded conception of time in 1 Second (2019). Playing with the specificities of scale, these conflations of time, space and language key into an altered present where past and future cohere and shift with possibility.

This engagement with our quantified approach to lived experience draws attention to the mechanics of our current. Engaging the realms of space and cosmology in Black Hole (2019) and Elliptical (2019), these calligraphic cartographies expand to a place beyond the confines of our social present. These works gesture at what is before and beyond language and the social orders it inscribes. Al Salem is transposing language into time and space, extending and intertwining each in an effort to realise the potential of this cohabitation, where everything is contemporary for a short time.

Every representation of ‘amma baad’ points to a future which escapes us within the moment we coexist with the piece, a constant deferral which leads us to anticipate the future while forcing a reflection on what has passed and what is now. This deferral is no more apparent than in the hypothetical, potent potential of Amma Qabl (2019), an idea and a book of instructions that enfold the dormancy of history into the myriad possibilities of the future. Here, as in all these works, Nasser Al Salem is translating language into time and space, extending and intertwining each to combine forces that might absorb and spur new conceptions of the present and new possibilities for the future.

Maya El Khalil Exhibition Curator
2019

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