Art of dialogism in its diversity

[T]he language and world of prayer, the language and world of song, the language and world of labor and everyday life [emerge] from a state of peaceful and moribund equilibrium and [reveal] the speech diversity in each.

I can see in this piece an illustration of the art of dialogism in its diversity, not only because of the obvious analogy of the angel looking at its own reflection and having an internal dialogue with herself, but because she is also disseminating the idea of identity as a shared condition where the self is never whole.

Slippers of Disobedience, composed of a colour photograph, neon, ceramic slippers and wooden bookstands, further emphasizes Hassan’s deconstructive space and the possibility of learning disobedience, a theme the inspiration of which began with the act of her own child’s disobedience and the reference to the manuscript (from the earlier installation The Copyist) that has become a key reference in the three works. The mother and child’s disembodied presence are suggested here by two sets of slippers (one small, the other larger) and two bookstands. The neon represents the flame of a candle held by the reader while trying to decipher, in dim light, the contents of the text, leaving the mark of smoke on the pages of the manuscript.

Simultaneity pervades Hassan’s work, whether she becomes answerable to Boutros, or dissolves herself into the intimacy of the copyist. Whether she thinks of art as a form of departure, or as a bridge between epochs and cultures. Her work makes known the responsibility inherent in carving one’s own space and mapping one’s own geography, and contributes indeed to the notion of artist as cultural agent and active participant of political art practice. A practice where the concepts of pluralism, dialectics and synthesis, are always problematized at each step of the process, and where the meaning of boundaries becomes the open-ended and unfinalizable circumstance of a polyphonic world where multiple voices have their homecoming.