Soup, London
Alia Hamaoui
Soup presents a solo booth of new works by artist Alia Hamaoui.
Scenery and imagery fluctuates between the generic and the specific, where trompe-l’œil, life-scaled prints feature a combination of stock imagery and commonplace fixtures of a semi-public locker room space, contrasted against distinct depictions pertaining to the privileging of particular narratives within Lebanese mythology. A continuation of Hamaoui’s exploration into how the construction of cultural heritage within the nation state structure has reduced the past to an alienating formulaic rotation of the copied-and-paste portrayals.
Hamaoui uses the transformative potential of the changing room as a way to re-examine our relationship to the past, expanding upon Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction – a reimagining of our accepted narrative of human evolution away from the dominant idea of the weapon as the first tool, positing instead the bag or vessel as the origin of hominisation. This re-defining of the earliest tool from the weapon to the container is mirrored in how the locker room is frequently used within popular culture as a setting for moments of both violence and vulnerability.
Complete with linoleum flooring, double-sided bench, sports du!e bags and re-upholstered protective attire, the works sit in a transitory suspension of (un)dressing, placing the viewer between both actor and spectator, internal and external to an unknown performance.
