The Untitled Images (2014)

Abstract

The Untitled Images (2014) Khaled Barakeh (bio) Modern artists are facing constant challenges in terms of defining their roles—artists are no longer just themselves; they often become an artist-activist, artist-journalist, artiststoryteller, and so on. But have our times changed the rules of truth telling, storytelling through art, content choices regarding topics that could, or should, be a part of discussion in the modern art world? After a few years of repetitive images of Middle Eastern misery shown in Western media, I've noticed a certain numbness, even a cruel boredom, in viewers becoming used to seeing scenes of massacres on daily basis. At the same time, editors and international photography agencies dominate content, showing what's subjectively worth showing and hiding what's not. Those photographs are, indeed, [End Page 142] undeniably violent, but they are never more brutal than the reality itself. Editors and agencies claiming that their actions of refusal protect audiences from violence deny the existence of the people portrayed, as if ignorance could ever be pictured as protection. Their choices naturally shape viewers' understanding of the conflict, as people reflect on it according to what they see. During the past few years in Syria, this problem has escalated into a new social dynamic, creating a cruel "competition" of violent images—only those who post the most horrific and intense visual materials win the world's attention. It has even led to people staging traumatic events, replaying the horrors they didn't manage to capture on film, guided surely by a feeling of necessity to create even more intense, exaggerated visual materials to satisfy the world. It might be that we think we know history and art history, but what we really know is just a reproduction of it. This series, The Untitled Images (2014, digital C print, five photos, 21 × 30 cm each), raises the question of how the existence and nonexistence of an artwork might affect the material existence of the reality presented in a photograph. It asks, how can we shape public opinion, based on reality on the ground, without showing the reality as it is? To challenge my own critical eye, I decided to use photographs taken in different parts of Syria, joined by one recurring feature—the horror of loss. Mostly portraying adults holding their children's bodies, the photos are brutal visual evidence of an equally brutal reality. I peeled off the silhouettes like we peel dead skin off our bodies—getting rid of the unwanted, the unpleasant, the inconvenient to see. Edited in this particular manner, the photos become acceptable for the media, showing only the desired amount of pain, or a lack of thereof. There are a few different levels of violence present in those pictures. First, there is that of the regime making this horror happen; second is that of the media, cynically deciding whose pain should be displayed on the pedestal of our TV screens; and last is my own layer of violence that I, as an artist, had to apply to those photographs, when I very carefully, almost surgically, erased the skin—and therefore the people who once were individuals. The act of erasure is, in fact, a protective one: the absence of the bodies makes them more present. The real-life victims are removed and become human silhouettes—they become a symbol of any victim, anywhere in the world, at any given time. Viewers are allowed to identify themselves with a universal feeling of loss and pain, not this specific one that they believe themselves to be far away from. [End Page 143] Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 144] Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 145] Click for larger view View full resolution Khaled Barakeh Khaled Barakeh is a painter and visual artist working in various media. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus, Syria, and holds an MFA from Funen Art Academy in Odense, Denmark. His conceptual art practices focus on politics and power structures in the context of identity, culture, and history. He has exhibited at...