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ART EXHIBIT
The Exploits of the Incomparable Shamila
Venue: UCA Gallery, 46 Lower Main Rd, Observatory. Tel: (021)
447 4132.
Gallery Hours: Mon - Fri: 10:00am - 5:00pm; Sat: 9:00am - 1:00pm
Duration: 1 Apr - 2 May 2009
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In The Exploits of the Incomparable
Shamila, Christopher Slack confronts media chicanery. In 2001, Slack began
producing work informed by the “War on Terror” media epidemic that ensued
after the 9/11 attack. Shamila’s character emerged from that maelstrom.
Shamila, the incomparable: the feminine
reincarnation of the Chechan militant Islamist, Emir Abdallah
Shamil Abu-Idris, who fought – and paid with his life and the lives of
hundreds of civilians – for Russia’s withdrawal from Chechnya. Without
knowing any more about her, Shamila is already set up for hot political
controversy. Take “hot” as the next cue: make Shamila a burkha-and-bikini-clad
supermodel posing provocatively with a machine-gun, and you have the first
statement in an inevitably heated debate.
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Slack typically draws on a multitude of
art historical influences resulting in work that is (over)loaded with
often contradictory meanings. Here, he has appropriated mass advertising’s
mode of depiction, placing Shamila in poses common in glossy magazines and
billboards advertising this season’s hottest trend. His colour is
saturated and high-gloss, his rendition precise. Despite his typically
multi-referential representation, there are two prevailing notions in this
body of work: War and Sex.
The mythical demigoddess becomes a
vehicle for Slack’s hard-hitting, double-edged outcry against the media’s
knack of twisting violence into an acceptable, if not always pretty,
picture by wrapping a war package up with a luscious sex ribbon. As much
as Shamila is powerful as a beautiful gun-bearing icon, she is robbed of
her power by deification. She may be holding an RPG, but she is fixed by
the public’s gaze, cast within in a stereotype no amount of firepower
could crack and rendered innocuous. Slack draws attention to the public’s
very similar position – hypnotised by the media’s supermodel, blind to the
armoured vehicle she waves from as an ethical minefield is laid.
The exhibition contains enamel-on-board
paintings and a number of woodcuts and screenprints, that together show
the contentious arc of Shamila’s development. Christopher Slack will also
feature in a dedicated article in one small seed’s March-April-May issue,
which will be available at the exhibition opening.
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