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Zoulikah Bouabdellah’s “Walk On The Sky, Pisces” (2009).
In the lead up to Art Dubai, it seemed a moment didn’t pass without a blockbuster story about the Gulf city’s glittery façade cracking. Headlines unveiled anecdotes of a mass foreign worker exodus, cars at the airport abandoned by the thousands, traffic-free highways, and of course debtor’s prisons. Yet the tone was decidedly optimistic once the doors of Art Dubai finally opened last Wednesday. The event was launched with the unveiling of work from the three winners of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize. This lucrative $200,000 grant pairs three international curators and artists from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (also referred to as the MENASA region). The work from the cross-cultural projects was displayed on a small, and of course, fake island next to Art Dubai. Of note were the collaboration between Carol Solomon and Algerian artist Zoulikah Bouabdellah. Whitewall caught up with Solomon, who teaches at Haverford College, to uncover the inspiration for “Walk On The Sky, Pisces” (2009).
WHITEWALL: How did you decide to work with this artist?
CAROL SOLOMON: She was in an exhibition I had organized. When we became aware of the competition, we decided it was something we wanted to do together.
WW: Had she begun working on the project before she was given the grant?
CS: It’s a project she had thought about in another form, but never had the resources to realize. Abraaj gave her the opportunity to develop it.
WW: What is the source of inspiration for the piece?
CS: In many ways it is a tribute to the Arab part of her background because it draws on these sources from the Koran, Arab history and tenth-century Persian astronomer al Sufi.
It is a tribute to the Arab part of her.
WW: How did you come to choose the final title?
CS: The constellation Pisces was selected because it’s the constellation of late February and March, and it’s based on a treatise and drawings for the constellations that were done by al Sufi. He is a very important figure in the history of astronomy. He translated all of the Ptolemy’s and his translation drawings were more or less the source of our present understanding of the constellations. The other source comes from the Bible and the Koran, and it is about the encounter between king Solomon and Queen of Sheba, which is a story you find in the Old and New Testament, and in different variations in the Koran. The part of the story that inspired this work had to do with this encounter when the Queen of Sheba came to visit King Solomon at his court. It was told to the king that she had hairy ankles and he wanted to confirm whether this was true. So when she approached the court he had constructed a glass floor so that it would be deceiving and she would think it was a pool of water. To cross the pool she lifted her skirt to reveal that she did in fact have hairy ankles. The glass floor was made so deceiving they even put fish under the glass so she would think it was water.
WW: What are the overriding themes here?
CS: In this work there is a conflation of two themes. You see the constellation—you can walk on the sky and Pisces, which means fish, is under the water. It also has the glass floor, which was inspired by this deceptive construction made by King Solomon. The conflation of these two themes comes out of Arab culture, history, and aesthetics.
