13 Essential Rules for Understanding the World

Overview

In 13 Essential Rules for Understanding the World, a list of numbered guidelines seem to be narrated by tulips with faces drawn on their petals. The bleak, futile and mostly defeatist scenario outlined by the rules is interrupted by scenes depicting acts of transition and repetition. Along with the subtle and dark humour, such interruptions are key to the narrative, and act in synchrony with my works on paper presented in the Biennial.

Works titled The Only Memory I Have of My Last Life Is the Uniformity of the Circumstances or They Endorsed Collective Failure as the Dawn of a New Renaissance are meant as fragments from imaginary narratives where societies exist in slightly warped utopias.

Protagonists seem to thrive within a social entity that embodies failure and accomplishment at the same time. The seemingly mismatched but suggestive titles aim at creating unexpected readings of the images, to open doors to the world out of which they evolve and to complement its ambiguity.


2013

This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 11