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Portrait of NUR SHKEMBI (left) and KHALED SABSABI (right). Courtesy the artists.
The Australian-Muslim art collective eleven was formed in 2016 with the purpose of encouraging autonomous dialogues about what it means to exist in the contemporary moment, both within and outside of the group. The collective draws on each of the 13 members’ cultural traditions to speak to the complex multiplicities within their faiths, their everyday lives, geographical spaces, and experiences, while together, they function as a hub of resistance against the often hegemonic cultural discourse in Australia.
Given the premise of the group, eleven’s first major gallery exhibition, titled “Waqt al-tagheer: Time of Change,” which recently opened at ACE Open in Adelaide, naturally took on a myriad of topics. From Shireen Taweel’s copper sculpture inspired by Australia’s first mosque, and Abdullah MI Syed’s crocheted prayer caps, delicately hand-stitched over LED lights, which are then hung from the gallery ceiling, to Abdul Abdullah’s photographic series featuring newlyweds against the backdrop of Malaysian Islamic wedding settings, it’s evident that a diversity of experiences exist in Australia, which is inhabited by Muslims from every corner of the globe. Now, these narratives are being represented in a contemporary setting.
On the occasion of the exhibition, ArtAsiaPacific reached out to Sydney-based artist, Khaled Sabsabi, who was involved in the formation of the group, and Nur Shkembi, Melbourne-based curator, writer, member of the collective, and convener of “Waqt al-tagheer,” to speak about the work of eleven and the platform that it aims to build.
Can you tell me how eleven came about?
Khaled Sabsabi (KS): The idea came about a couple of years ago at a conference, organized by the Centre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture at the University of Adelaide. The conference itself was very diverse and had an artist component. A few members of what would then become eleven were there. We met up and thought it’d be a good idea to form a collective, inspired by the urban-Indigenous arts group ProppaNOW—people agreed and from there, eleven emerged. Most of us knew each other, and if we didn’t personally know each other, we were aware of each other’s practice.
The artists in the collective live all across Australia. Initially, there wasn’t any talk about exhibitions or projects, it was more about having a group of people who identify as Australian Muslims come together to talk about common interests with support, trust and respect for each other. That in itself is quite a complex process, not just because of the group’s various religious and or spiritual affiliations, but also ethnicities, life experiences, gender and so on. Every artist has their own solo practice—their works are each completely different.
As we’re moving along, things are getting clearer and a structure is starting to form, although that will of course change. When we first started there were 11 of us, and now there are a few more. The name of the group is more a philosophy than a number. I initially brought the name eleven up because there’s spiritual significance in the number—significance that spans multiple religious and cultural groups.
What changes when you express things as a collective, rather than as individual artists?
KS: We’re about initiating conversations across the whole of Australia and beyond, bridging our communities—the Muslim communities of Australia—with the world. Because of the diversity of the collective, we’re able to have these conversations in a more rounded manner. As a group, you have a responsibility to others in the collective. In some regards, we do have more agency as a collective, but we’re also very complex individuals—you can’t really pin down a community of over 1.2 billion people across the globe into a singular view.
Nur Shkembi (NS): For me, being part of this collective and being afforded this wonderful opportunity to work closely with and learn from so many incredibly talented, articulate and intelligent people is a great inspiration; it not only allows me to extend myself within my practice, but also as a person. We are brought together by the experiences that we share as Muslim Australians and by our ethos of striving for an egalitarian and humane social condition. Working together as a collective can amplify our voice in many ways.
SHIREEN TAWEEL, Musallah, 2017, pierced copper, 30 × 180 × 180 cm. Photo by Sam Roberts Photography. Courtesy the artist.
Eleven presented an exhibition, “We Are All Affected,” in 2017, across the Multicultural Eid Festival and in two gallery spaces, but “Waqt al-tagheer: Time of Change” is your first gallery-only exhibition as a collective. Can you tell me a little bit about the exhibition?
NS: The show came out of a conversation that my co-curator Abdul-Rahman had with Liz Nowell [the chief executive officer of ACE Open] when the collective first came together in 2016, during which Abdul-Rahman put forward the idea of exploring the different experiences of the collective through time, and from that kernel, a rather organic development of the conceptual elements of the exhibition began.
We were quite deliberate and grounded in the material reality of the works. Much of our thinking evolved in a type of feedback loop with the work and the artists themselves. This presented us with the subthemes of the poetic within the sociopolitical, and the spiritual within the everyday.
Abdul-Rahman and I also worked very closely with the team at ACE Open to bring this concept forward, not just as an exhibition, but also in terms of how we delivered this through our public programs and the publication.
Some of the artists in the show use appropriation as a method to turn the eye back on the viewer, while others bring in the history of their own experiences and that of their culture, and further, use representation to offer alternate perceptions—how are these different modes of address brought together in the exhibition?
NS: So many of these works emanate from the long-standing practice of the participating artists, and the variegated approaches are apparent within the exhibition from the outset. Time is the thread that brings the works together conceptually. In some works, time is presented at the fore, as with Abdul-Rahman’s sculpture 500 Books (2018) where the artist reveals a discovery that changed his life and reflects upon the profound moments we have in childhood, when our perceptions and understanding shift.
Shireen Taweel’s narrative was delivered through her beautifully hand-crafted copper piece informed by the reimagination of the Australian landscape and the spiritual presence and history of Australian Muslims. In particular, Taweel traces the history of the mosques that were established in the 1800s in Broken Hill and Marree in Western and Southern Australia.
Abdul Abdullah, Safdar Ahmed, Eugenia Flynn and Hoda Afshar explore the current sociopolitical climate. Each of the artists are challenging specific phenomenon, which are directly related to a particular time, for example, September 11 and the ensuing Islamophobia that followed, as well as the reinvigoration of the obsession with the objectification of the female Muslim body through the frame of orientalism that has so pervaded perceptions of non-Western subjects.
Zeina Iaali and Abdullah MI Syed engage with the concept of time through a reflexive and critical view on “tradition,” respectively exploring the commodification of culture and religion. Khadim Ali’s exceptionally beautiful work, The Arrivals 1 (2016), comprises a wool and gold-leaf carpet imbued with golden gum leaves, commonly depicted on the Australian passport (as a symbolism of nationhood), and demon heads representing the other. Ali presses on one of the most urgent humanitarian issues of our time: the utterly disgraceful act of dehumanizing and “othering” the most vulnerable of our human family—asylum seekers and refugees—through the unrelenting demonization of their person and being.
These different modes work together simply because they touch on topics as shared through the artist’s narratives, which are at once universal yet deeply personal.
Khaled, could you tell us about your work, displayed in the exhibition?
KS: My work, At the Speed of Light, is a question that I’ve had in my head for a very long time. It’s about scriptures and sacred texts—not just from the monolithic religions, but also subsets of Eastern, Western and ancient traditions and cultures, which share this notion that humans are descended from a divine light. This is in the word enlightenment itself. The light that I’m speaking about isn’t just physical light—it’s light that transcends physical natures and properties. The inquiry in the work is simple—if we travel at the speed of light, will we be able to interact with this unseen, divine realm?
I worked with the Sydney Observatory and came up with the required calculations to determine how the speed of light work could be symbolically and visually represented. I filmed 218 hours, 34 minutes and 28 seconds of continuous video footage. The camera was fixed and pointed to the stars for over 11 days. Once the footage was captured I accelerated the footage to one second, at the speed of light. As I was working through this acceleration process, it turned out that the computer couldn’t render the data in one lot. Instead, it had to split the information into 11 parts to get a one second outcome, hence the 11 channels in the installation.
Detailed installation view of KHALED SABSABI’s At the Speed of Light, 2016, 11-channel HD video installation with audio, 25 gold leaf, acrylic and enamel paint works on photographic paper, 100 copies (each) of five multilingual texts on paper, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.
The work is shown on the floor, through 11 different television screens arranged in a counter-clockwise formation to represent Sufi teaching—in particular, Rumi’s whirling dervishes, spinning to receive and disperse positive energy onto this earth. The monitors are held up by rocks for two reasons: to indicate that earth is our witness and will testify to our actions as human beings, and to emphasize the divine, held within the earth.
Another part of the work is a translation of the concept into the five most spoken languages, for accessibility and inclusivity. People can take these translations away with them to share with others. The final part of that work is the 25 frames displayed on the wall, which pays homage to the video component, as the work was shot in 25 frames per second. These frames are abstract micro-objects, treated using traditional calligraphy and gold leafing techniques, symbolizing the cosmos.
Why is eleven important now?
KS: It’s important because of the current state of the world. Some artists in the collective use terms such as “Islamophobia” to refer to the discrimination against Muslims. However, not all collective members do this. That is the beautiful thing about the group—we all deal with the issues of our times differently. We can have conversations that are on various plateaus as individuals. Eleven is both for the broader community and for Australian Muslim communities to find places of strength and wellness, creating a platform for conversations, instead of getting caught up in political agendas and debates. What it all comes down to is the basic human premise of having respect for ourselves and each other.
“Waqt al-tagheer: Time of Change,” presented as part of Adelaide Festival, is on view at ACE Open, Adelaide, until April 21, 2018.
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