Why do these artists insist on getting caught up in controversy?

Yara El-Sherbini, one of the most bold and intellectually provocative artists emerging onto the international arts scene over the past year, opened her first solo show last February in the midst of intense media frenzy over the cartoons[i] depicting the Profit Mohammad with a bomb in his turban. Her exhibition included a series of “carpet bombs” (cartoon like bombs made with prayer mats and Persian rugs), jokes alluding to veiled women getting into trouble with the police for their suspicious appearance, and a video piece depicting the artist singing Britney Spears’ “Hit me one more time”, using a plastic gun in lieu of a microphone.

Unfortunate timing was our first thought. But, it was not the first time this 28 year old found her self unexpectedly immersed in a heated international debate. Her book “Sheik ‘n’ Vac”[ii], a collection of drawings and cheeky jokes about Muslim representations in the West, reached the shelves of artsy London bookstores, days after the terrifying July 2005 attacks on the London public transport system.

Are they exploiting the public’s sensibility for their own personal gain?

Given the timing of these public appearances, it is little wonder that a frequently asked question is whether it is morally justifiable for artists to gain media attention by appropriating controversial socio-political issues as their main subject matter.

Is this art or a clever little marketing ploy designed to generate media attention and sales?

Good question … Wrong artist

Yara El-Sherbini was born in the UK, she has a British passport and uses English to communicate. Her father is Egyptian, a Muslim with a keen interest in comparisons between Arabic, Jewish, and Christian religious texts. Her mother is Caribbean, from Trinidad Tobago. She grew up in Yorkshire (hence the accent), and studied fine art at the Slade School of Art[iii], one of London’s premier institutions.

The subjects Yara El-Sherbini deals with through her work are deeply personal.
The student-union-ish humour and cocky stand up comedy style performances are not an assemblage of one-liners borrowed from tabloid press. Her pieces of art (and what she calls her authored jokes) are anecdotes from everyday life when you are an Egyptio-Caribbean-British student, sharing a flat near St. Johns Wood, London.

At the tender age of 28, Yara El-Sherbini embodies many of the characteristics which make Western society in the 21st Century appear so eclectic, unpredictable, confusing and potentially unstable.
 As an artist, she chooses to speak about herself, making up the words, the grammar, and the language as she goes along.

So what is El-Sherbini trying to achieve then?

“Should I be laughing at this?” is what most people wonder when confronted with Yara El-Sherbini’s work. The pieces this young artist presents in her first solo exhibition rely heavily on humour and are far from politically correct.

A video titled “A Demonstration” alludes to the double meaning of the word in order to protest against the insistence on using semantics to divert attention from real meaning. The piece parodies Blue Peter style TV programmes for children, by teaching the viewer how to make a carpet bomb from household junk.

A sculpture titled “Mother and Child” shows two bombs, one large, one small, making direct reference to familiar images of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, as well as to the exacerbation of the culture of violence in the Middle East.

Humour in this case, is not being used as a device for attacking, criticising, or ridiculing, but as a method for provoking intellectual engagement.   The artists intention is to provoke her audience into taking another look at the idiosyncrasies of contemporary society, to have the audacity to question “difficult issues”, to “suspend your disengagement” (as she says in one of her pieces), and to think again.

Does anyone care?

Ever since she graduated from her Fine Art MA in spring 2005, Yara El-Sherbini’s career has taken off with numerous prestigious awards, commissions and invitations to participate in group shows across the world. Her work has been followed closely in the international art press, including Flash Art International, Frieze Magazine, A-N Magazine, and The New York Times, generating equal amounts of praise and criticism.

“One can argue about the artistic quality of her work, but she is undeniably pissed off and politically engaged” (Power Ekroth, “Creative politics in the White cube”, SITE Magazine)

“Move over Brit Art – here’s Grit Art … El-Sherbini’s work teams world politics and sharp questions. The themes are familiar, of course, but her gritty work makes me feel cathartically uncomfortable.  (The Times Educational Supplement, 2005)
Journalists, young roll-up-your-sleeves-and-do-something intellectuals, and astute collectors seem to be El-Sherbini’s most enthusiastic public.

The Spanish press reacted strongly to the artists’ challenging first solo show, with Matías Vallés[iv] (enfant terrible of Spanish journalism) being the first who picked up the baton.

With a full page interview with Yara El-Sherbini appearing on the back cover of Diario de Mallorca the day after the official inauguration, it was clear that the debate over representation of Muslims in the West had moved beyond the gallery walls, into the public realm.

This question was made more poignant by the fact that the front cover of the newspaper carried a gigantic photograph of young Muslims burning a Danish flag in protest against the cartoon incidents. While the headline to El-Sherbini’s interview quoted her complaining “We Muslims are demonised in the West”.

Matías Vallés’ article was followed by many others written in English, Spanish, Catalan and German. Not only art critics were keen to discuss the contents of this most unusual show. Journalists and political commentators who are usually reluctant to talk about contemporary art, felt that this exhibition provided a new framework for looking at some of the most controversial issues they were dealing with.

Collectors on the other hand, snapped up her jokes transformed into sculptures, as well as the video pieces which had so deeply offended some art critics at the Cairo Biennale.

To the artists’ surprise however, the stars of the show were without a doubt, the carpet bombs themselves.

The new face of emerging art in the 21^st Century

Like every generation before them, the current generation of contemporary artists are no longer concerned with the same issues which riled up their predecessors. Nor do they find that the languages and vocabulary (in the widest sense of the word) which they inherited is adequate to communicate their preoccupations.

The beauty of today’s emerging art is not in the colours used to paint the pictures, nor the pristine galleries and museums which host the shows.

The “wow” factor lies in its ability to find the simplest and most effective way of saying what we find so complicated to express through today’s principle vehicle for communication; mass media.