Silsila
Sama Alshaibi: Silsila
Hatton Gallery
Department of Art and Art History, Colorado State University
551 W. Pitkin Street, Fort Collins, CO 80523
October 5 - December 22, 2023
Admission: Free
Review by Clare Gucwa
Sama Alshaibi’s solo exhibition Silsila is currently on view at the Hatton Gallery at Colorado State University (CSU). It is presented in conjunction with the Center for Fine Art Photography and the CSU Center for Environmental Justice as part of the Environmental Justice Thru the Arts exhibition series. Part of her larger project also titled Silsila, Alshaibi creates photographs and videos of performances, explorations, and documentations of her journey through fifteen predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Maldives nation of islands in Southeast Asia between 2009 and 2016.
An installation view of Sama Alshaibi's exhibition Silsila at the Hatton Gallery at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Image by Clare Gucwa.
With this body of work, Alshaibi demonstrates connections between humans and their environment and ultimately the environmental issues that we all share and with which we must contend. The realistic and fantastical qualities of these images, the intimate setting the viewer is a part of when experiencing the works, and the constant tension between water and desert in the pieces all contribute to forging these connections. Above all, Alshaibi celebrates her journey while also bringing attention to individual and collective ties to the land itself.
Sama Alshaibi, Silsila (Link), 2014, digital archival print, 44 x 32 inches. Image courtesy of the Center for Fine Art Photography.
In Alshaibi's photographs of desert landscapes and water, the artist often enters the scene herself as a solitary figure. The first photograph viewers encounter in the exhibition, Silsila (Link), signals a starting point and occupies a wall of its own. In this work, Alshaibi stands in an expanse of water with her back to the camera and left hand raised, palm facing upward. Clothed in black, she becomes a silhouette reflected almost perfectly onto the water below her and creates a void in the landscape, only broken by her bare arm outstretched as if receiving something or someone.
Sama Alshaibi, Fātnis al-Jazīrah (Fantasy Island), 2014, digital archival print, 44 x 32 inches. Image courtesy of the Center for Fine Art Photography.
Her figure appears to desire a connection with the landscape, reaching toward it as the water surrounds her, but she is also removed from it—a black shape invading the scene. The displacement of people and cultures is a common theme in Alshaibi’s work, and it comes across here as we observe the tension between belonging to the landscape while also being separated from it.
Sama Alshaibi, Birket Siwa (Siwa Lake), 2014, digital archival print, 44 x 32 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
Small ripples around the edges of the silhouette also imply the impact humans have on their environments. These ripples spread further and further outward in other images where Alshaibi’s silhouette also reads as a void, including Birket Siwa (Siwa Lake) and Fātnis al-Jazīrah (Fantasy Island). In Birket Siwa (Siwa Lake), Alshaibi stands in the blue lake and looks toward a horizon line, with highly saturated and crisply defined trees and vegetation in the distance. Because the reflections of the trees on the water lack haziness and seem too perfect, it is unclear what is reality and what is fiction. And though the idealized beauty of the place appears real, the belief that these landscapes will remain unchanged is questionable.
Sama Alshaibi, Noor (Illumination), 2013, single-channel digital video with audio, 6 minutes 16 seconds. Image by Clare Gucwa.
The presentations of the video works create even more intimate experiences between the viewer and the gallery environment. Noor (Illumination) is displayed flat on the gallery floor surrounded by a frame of sand. The viewer must lean, hover, or kneel to watch the video, which brings awareness to one’s own body and its relationship with the art environment. Here and in the photographs, the viewer is also an analogue to the solitary figure, which leads us to consider how we would move through the different environments and landscapes depicted in these works.
An installation view of Sama Alshaibi's Iihya’ (Revival), 2023, single-channel digital video with audio, 12 minutes 19 seconds. Image by Clare Gucwa.
Entering a small room in the back of the gallery, which is decorated with a patterned rug and textiles covering two benches, viewers encounter another video work: Iihya’ (Revival). Displayed on a monitor atop a pedestal, in this setting like a living room, we see Alshaibi’s body in motion in this piece. Her figure journeys across landscapes of water that shift and change while her expression remains stoic. The reeds or grasses she holds in her hands flow around her to create a kaleidoscope view of geometric shapes. These shapes and their symmetry allude to similar forms often seen in Islamic art which speak to links between the individual and the divine. [1]
A still from Sama Alshaibi's Iihya’ (Revival), 2023, single-channel digital video with audio, 12 minutes 19 seconds. Image courtesy of the Center for Fine Art Photography.
Both Iihya’ (Revival) and Noor (Illumination) present a heightened, fantastical reality through these undulating, biomorphic shapes that appear within geometric patterns and concentric circles. Alshaibi’s hands are often the focus of the interaction with the environment. In Iihya’ (Revival), Alshaibi holds the reeds and grasses in poses that connote strength, stability, and an awareness of her place within the environment. Certain sequences of this video play forward and then appear to play in reverse. Thus, Alshaibi is seen taking from the environment and giving back, creating a balance that can be understood as a way forward rather than a repetition of the imbalance of the past.
Sama Alshaibi, Jarasun Yaqra’ Ii-I-Mawt (Death Knell), 2010, digital archival print, 44 x 32 inches. Image courtesy of the Center for Fine Art Photography.
Returning to the photographs, the three works titled Jarasun Yaqra’ Ii-I-Mawt (Death Knell), Ta’shīr (Marking), and Mā Lam Tabkī (Unless Weeping) depict an environment of white sand and white clouds within which Alshaibi appears to perform. It is often unclear where the desert ends and the sky begins, though in Mā Lam Tabkī (Unless Weeping) a bright blue sky speckled with white clouds fills the frame. In this image, water and desert seem to merge and the figure appears to exist in a landscape full of the sky and its reflection.
Sama Alshaibi, Ta’shīr (Marking), 2010, digital archival print, 44 x 32 inches. Image courtesy of the Center for Fine Art Photography.
All of the images chosen from this project for the exhibition present a tension between water and desert. The water seems to allude to abundance and natural resources, and reflects this abundance on its surface, whereas the desert emotes a lack of life through its impenetrable texture. These works demonstrate the link between humans and the environment, but they also pose the question: what will happen to humanity once our habitable environment disappears or changes beyond solvability?
Three works by Sama Alshaibi in herexhibition Silsila at the Hatton Gallery. Image by Clare Gucwa.
Sama Alshaibi’s Silsila evokes the connections at the crux of our existence, both as individuals and as members of cultural groups and communities who have relationships with the land. The work foregrounds the fact that culture and history cannot be separated from the land just as we cannot separate ourselves from the global environmental issues that affect us all.
Clare Gucwa (she/her) is a graduate student studying art history at the State University of New York at Purchase College. Her research interests include Latin American art of the twentieth century, art in public spaces, and institutional critique. Her work explores how collecting and exhibition practices shape our understanding of artworks, artifacts, and cultural objects.
[1] Sama Alshaibi, “9. Silsila: Linking Bodies, Deserts, Water” in Deborah Willis, et al., Women and Migration: Responses in Art and History (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2019) 107-112. Accessible online at http://books.openedition.org/obp/7975.
