BECOMING A DOG

2013 The process of the work started from a second-hand market near Goldsmith College when I bout an album for one pound; it looked nice and old-style. My surprise was it was full of pictures, and when I asked about the pictures, they said it was free; you could throw it away. Then the Idea of turning this material that has zero value into an experience and a little discovery, and maybe give it value through making it into artwork that has value to others. The research happened when there was no AI to give the picture to and analyse the symbols; then I had to go through the pictures one by one, finding symbols and places that are possible to visit. The closest place I found in the picture was a castle called  Hampton Court Palace.

How to find the places name and when it located it needed many days of comparation between  pictures of palaces in UK to find the perfect match and while the the family had a visit to the side the two couple and a son aged between 15 to 20 probably, and a dog, I wanted to visit the site but while the visiting new places gives you exciting interest for new palace or things to see, this excitement all has gone through thousand pictures of the place of every corner, every inch. Then I thought seeing the place as a human who builds a very complicated system of images that kills the feeling of new experiences is not possible. 

I started thinking what the experience would be if I visited as a dog that was in the pictures. From this perspective, I attached a Handycam to my head and visited the place, walking on my knees and hands to position my head in the dog's place. The first show of the whole work as an installation was inside my studio for the visiting tutors. I filled a wall with pictures of the place, and the video I recorded with the camera also had to be edited to look like the dog's vision; the video had to become square, with the possibilities that dogs see 290 angles instead of humans' 180 angles and reduced to the colours the dog sees.  I tried to get as much out of the materials as possible, like I did a little animation to get the album ready for research and artwork, but it was never fully ready for exhibition on its own in London.

2017 The Workshop at Silemany University.

When the University of Silemani asked me to do a seminar in the College, I thought it would be better to do a workshop for students that motivates them to understand both the curating process and to build their own work from unknown materials that are new to them. After the materials were used to make their own exhibition. I gave my seminar on the day of the exhibition to show that there are various viewpoints for the same material.