Reem Bassous Statement/Glossary
Grid: The process begins with a grid, which acts as a necessary structure for the multi-layered composition to come. The work is always at risk of being erased, which parallels the fear of loss in real life. The energetic mark, which is imbued with feeling and purpose, can reveal so much about the “act”, be it war, or violence. However, these marks can also overtake the composition. That is why the grid is necessary; it anchors everything and offers a home-base reference for the composition.
Underlying Geometry: The lines and shapes guide the viewer throughout the composition through a visual weaving that tuck under or impose themselves over the various depicted elements. This interplay is often a dance between the abstract mark and a representational feature.
Visual Dictionary: An extensive archive of images collected for the past 17 years, which includes various symbols and icons. Symbols, in the form of Coptic or Islamic Art, are stand-ins for events or groups of people from my native Lebanon and the Middle East at large. Icons manifest as landmarks in my memory and are very tangible things that I grew up with. Since loss of life and loss of material things are of constant concern, this visual dictionary also acts as a memory keeper.
Integrity of the mark: Each mark should have enough presence and body to hold its own form and not take on the anatomy of the previous layer. The mark acts as a conduit to one’s innermost thoughts and sensations. Hysteria, elation, distress or neutrality can transfer through the hand into the mark. Truth, in its purest form as it relates to the mark, can lead to the painting fulfilling its visual purpose. Honesty in mark-making can lead to the elimination of arbitrary or decorative marks which can hold no true purpose. It is a great mission that the mark carries; it has a role to fulfill in the creation of a complete work.
Moribund Outlivers: The postwar survivor appears in the form of a Moribund, someone who negotiates the path in between life and death. These figures are not formed deliberately; the paint determines how they appear (or disappear). The paint delivers the assault which shapes these Moribunds in their habitats. The “hysteria of the mark” that Gilles Deleuze writes about in describing Francis Bacon’s work comes into play: What quantifies a figure? What quantifies a head without a face? The figure is sometimes painted on a large surface, scaled to meet any viewer/spectator eye to eye. The tension that interaction generates is aimed to draw the viewer in and immerse them in the painting.
Substrate: The figures’ host paintings are often on unstretched canvas, allowing for the work to be rolled and carried by these nomads navigating the afterlife (or how a refugee in the present may roll a blanket for travel). This highlights impermanence; the large paintings haven’t been stretched since 2011, in solidarity with Syrian refugees.
Color: Blue and black play major roles in my compositions. Blue represents the realm of stars, paradise and infinity. Black represents the infinite in Western Art, but represents the rich, loamy soil out of which anything can grow in Islamic Art. Layers of black are peeled back and reasserted, as portals open within the surface that shift space, inviting a search for answers buried within.
The Infinite: A dual grappling of painter and the painted with death and the unknown. There is a constant search for answers as an imagined journey is taken into the afterlife depicted through various painted scenarios.
Excavation: To un-inter, unbury, exhume previous layers or memories of the surface of the painting itself, as a metaphor for excavating the various layers of Beirut’s buried history.
Living Bones: My Téta (grandma in Arabic) died in 1982 in Beirut. Hailing from Haifa and exiled in Lebanon, she couldn’t be buried in her hometown. Years later, when I asked after her remains, I was told that the cemetery where she was buried was destroyed in the war. In Hawaiʻi, where I used to live, ancestral bones are sacred. Unearthing bones is sacrilegious, as the spirits of the buried exist within the bones; to unearth them is to cause unrest. This made me reflect on Arab burial practices, and it forced me to ask: Where are the bones? Living Bones is my attempt to locate ancestral remains. Viewers are confronted with death and offered a reminder from the bones that the spirit remains. Grappling with loss and then the disorientation caused by burial disinterment is a painful yet necessary process as I continue to piece my grandmother together.
Scorched Earth: Scorched Earth highlights the effects of watershed colonialism. Whether it be Lahaina, Lebanon or Palestine, water has long since been used as a tool of war and control. With the wars in Lebanon and Palestine, I, like many of my female Arab artist friends, find that I am making marks of agitation on canvas, paper, cement. The marks mean nothing, yet they are a manifestation of an energy that is frantic. I do this so that I can continue to breathe... I scratch at the surface and attempt to bring voice to the horror I feel within me and to highlight that the absence of water is also the absence of life.