|
As dreamers we know that the only way of expressing who we are is in disguise. To be dreaming is to be hiding something from ourselves. Dreams tell us that unfiltered self-knowledge may be self-defeating; that to be a person is to protect ourselves; that identity is an elaborate form of defense: a screen, a filter, a mask, a cage. Susan Hefuna’s new sculptures and drawings offer a physical analogue to this mental structure: an experience of the patterns and grids we construct to navigate our inner and outer worlds, of the laces we don to become social and sexual beings capable of facing others. |
|
“The structures we invent to assure ourselves that we have nothing to fear.”
Susan Hefuna, Structure I, 2011. Aluminum, 53 x 36 cm. Courtesy of Susan Hefuna and The Third Line, Dubai.
YES, YOU DON’T KNOW ME.
the art of susan hefuna
Bettina Mathes
As dreamers we know that the only way of expressing who we are is in disguise. To be dreaming is to be hiding something from ourselves. Dreams tell us that unfiltered self-knowledge may be self-defeating; that to be a person is to protect ourselves; that identity is an elaborate form of defense: a screen, a filter, a mask, a cage. Susan Hefuna’s new sculptures and drawings offer a physical analogue to this mental structure: an experience of the patterns and grids we construct to navigate our inner and outer worlds, of the laces we don to become social and sexual beings capable of facing others.
Though abstract and formal, the drawings and sculptures contain the body. They are produced in one spontaneous, uninterrupted movement of the hand; transforming this puzzling state of mind we call dreaming (a state where we are both known and unknown to ourselves) into tangible objects. Ink and pencil on multiple layers of tracing paper, the drawings present abstract patterns and figurations. They evoke embroidery and tapestry, but also molecular structures, maps, cityscapes, the intricate ornaments of the mashrabiya. The structures we invent to assure ourselves that we have nothing to fear. And fear there is. What could be more prone to destruction than pencil, ink, and tracing paper? With each layer covering the other(s), the drawings are examples of kindred self-defense. No disguise is ever flat, and the drawings are no exception. The superimposed layers of translucent paper create an indefinable space: firm yet shifting, wounded yet protected, strange yet intimate. I know this space. It is my home, the place where I draw strength from weaving my veils, and speaking from behind a screen not to withdraw into isolation, not to reject relationships but to face others in spite of my vulnerability.
