Noora AlHardan
- The RAW Talent 2022
We asked special guests to choose a student whose work must be highlighted, whose talents they want to share with the world and whose names we’ll all soon know in Qatar.
Discover curators Rola Khayyat & Peter Welz's pick!
Artist Statement
I am a multidisciplinary artist that works with paintings, printing, installations, and photography. When it comes to creating art, my main inspiration ranges from the context of everyday life, whether it is my surrounding environment, still life, or a merge of both. I’m interested in capturing images–with an analog camera, of architectural, abandoned, and/or local spaces that I find compelling and I then convert them into paintings, using my photographs and my memory of the place/space as a template. My reasoning behind choosing abandoned spaces falls back to my background and overall inspiration as an artist, which deals with shedding light on things I notice that are often overlooked.
I’m fascinated by the light leaks and distortions that occur unexpectedly after developing the film, altering the image preserved in my mind. This melange of the imaginary image and the actual image of the place, find their way into my compositions. My current work includes large scale canvases that explore the epic nature of these sites, the architecture of space in all its geometry and scale, the intricacy of the lines that make up the space, as well as an intimate rendering of the presence of absence. I allow the viewer to experience these spaces through filters and distortions, offering a new perspective on the ordinary and a chance for the audience to step back and look at the world with a different lens.
Rola Khayyat and
Peter Welz biographies
Rola Khayyat is a Lebanese interdisciplinary artist, educator and curator. Her work explores new dimensions on the representation of war, memory, and belonging.
Rola has curated shows in Beirut, Thessaloniki, Havana, and New York, such as the BEYroute for the third Thessaloniki Biennale, Lattice Work at the Black and White gallery, Simmer at Kunstraum LLC. and Light in Wartime at apexart. She has participated in artist residencies such as Artellewa, Kamen Art Residency, and curatorial workshops such as Berlin Herbst Salon’s YCA, the Salzburg Academy of Art and the Festival Academy. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including exhibitions at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Okk / raum 29, Catalyst Arts Belfast Photo Festival 2013, the 21st International Istanbul Art Fair and North of History (NY). Rola is a recipient of Magnum Foundation Fellowship (2020) and the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship (2021). Khayyat received a B.A. in Historical Studies from the American University of Beirut (2003), a diploma in Intensive Drawing from the Florence Academy of Art (2005) and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University (2016). She is currently Assistant professor in the Painting and Printmaking Department at VCUarts in Qatar.
Peter Welz was educated at the National-College of Art and Design (Dublin), at the Chelsea College of Art and Design (London) and at the Cooper Union (New York). On the one hand, his artistic works are known for their kinetic experimental arrangements; on the other hand, the cinematic plays a central role. In addition to questions about the status of the image, the sculptural and the question of the relationship between image and space, aspects of the figurative have recently been a particular feature of his work. Welz’s artistic work also reflects his engagement with Samuel Beckett. He also became known for a five-part video installation created in close collaboration with choreographer William Forsythe. In 2020, Welz was one of 117 Berlin-based artists represented in the Studio Berlin exhibition at the Berghain techno club with a work entitled Fuck Your Loneliness. Works by Peter Welz can be found in the Goetz Collection, the Falckenberg Collection, the collection of the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, among others.
About the Selected Project
Typically, liminal spaces are characterized by transition, presented in the physical forms of corridors, stairways, doorways or corridors, serving as passages between one place and another. In her work these are empty and abandoned, devoid of human presence. Yet, despite their disquieting indistinctness, these spaces remain strangely familiar, inducing an oddly combined feeling of eeriness and nostalgia. However, her works include a recognisable cast of elements, inhabiting these liminal spaces and contending with their own periods of change. In this sense, by combining representations of the architectural and the bodily, her work implies how liminality can affect our mental existence when we are left in a limbo between one stage in life and the next. The very form and materiality of her artworks themselves reflect these notions of the intermediate. Her works often blend photography and painting, sometimes combined with slide projections or video projections, leaving us questioning the familiar yet beguiling worlds they create. Recognisable symbols are often slightly distorted within the painting or eerily perfected by the overlaying photo print, building up to construct a seemingly alternate reality characterized by ambiguity. – Peter Welz
Her works often blend photography and painting, sometimes combined with slide projections or video projections, leaving us questioning the familiar yet beguiling worlds they create.
Alice Aslem
Alya Alkaabi
AlMaha AlKaabi
Ece Yigit
Fajer Al-Abdulghani
Hassan Alshehhi
Maryam Al-Khaldi
Noora AlHardan
Faculty:
Dr. Aissa Deebi, Director
Michael Perrone,
Peter Welz,
Dr. Bahaa Abudaya,
Khalifa Al Obaidly,
Rola Khayyat,
Habeeb Futtaim and Mansour Mosawi
Related Topics
The RAW Talent
2022
