Spanning across mediums from sculpture to computer programs, perfumes to performances, artist Adham Faramawy’s work draws on the visual and aural language of promoting to explore how media consumption within the digital age influences identity construction and perceptions of the body.
A recurring theme in Adham’s work sees people, sometimes himself, inhabiting industrial scenarios which then take a surreal turn. Performance piece “Total Flex,” for instance, is a take-off on instructional work out videos through which footage of a unadorned man exercising is layered onto psychedelic visual effects. Meanwhile, “Make Up Tutorial,” released earlier this 12 months, takes the shape of the YouTube beauty tutorial because it’s start line before starting to unravel into nonsense dialogue as slime and foam devour each man and screen.
We talked to the artist in regards to the inspiration behind “Make Up Tutorial” and why he’s drawn to exploring the medium of technology through his art.
What inspired your video “Make Up Tutorial”? Why did you must use the format of a beauty tutorial as a start line?
Adham Faramawy: My sister’s a beauty editor in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and he or she got me into watching these make-up tutorials on YouTube and Instagram. A few of them are pretty funny, pretty extreme and truthfully I really like that! I also noticed how way more varied the people making this sort of material are than I might need seen on TV. A lot of my work thinks about how promoting positions and utilises certain identity types and constitutes how we take into consideration our bodies that it was difficult to not take apart this sort of often branded content.
Are you able to tell us about the way you made the video – is it a process you’ve used before? How does this film slot in together with your other work in that regard?
Adham Faramawy: I make artwork in loads of media from sculpture to computer programs, to perfume, to print, mostly revolving around performance for camera videos. I’m within the work sometimes but often I work with performers. Almost all the time the footage is post-produced and animated over. I’ve made a good little bit of work that considers the proximity of art images to industrial images, that replicates and toys with industrial strategies. In that sense, this video is an evolution of that process that form of hybridises or synthesizes the approach of some quite varied artists and groups like Art Club 2000, Alex Bag, Yayoi Kusama or Lynda Benglis.
The video pairs surreal visuals with dialogue that is usually nonsense. Why? Was there any method behind this madness?
Adham Faramawy: I find promoting images so seductive. I’m a complete mark for perfume ads and sometimes I find how naive I’m in regards to the ways I see and understand images form of disturbing. I wanted to search out a technique to think through that. Sometimes the best way I would do this is to repeat the best way a picture is made and intensify certain parts of it, using science fiction as a technique to push the image until it unravels.
”Nonetheless fun loads of these videos are, I form of feel trapped by them and I desired to attempt to make an escape valve.“
What do you’re thinking that the intense popularity of make-up tutorials and sweetness bloggers says about our time and society?
Adham Faramawy: Coming from a family of journalists, I suppose what I’ve been keen on is the best way that a shift in networked technology has enabled and encouraged a wide range of individuals to make images and that for some reason this has change into brand sponsored and quite quickly this content seems to have change into the dominant type of promoting, forcing old media to play catch up.
I wondered, as a diversity activist who has been shouting for more diverse representation, if the industrial form this representation is taking may not actually be counterproductive and if this recent sales mechanism may not just be compounding certain problems. Nonetheless fun loads of these videos are, I form of feel trapped by them and I desired to attempt to make an escape valve.
Your work often engages with technology, and recently you’ve been working with VR. What’s it in regards to the mediums that you simply’re drawn to exploring?
Adham Faramawy: The body is the central concern of my work and I began getting really enthusiastic about what sculptural and immersive viewing might mean by way of how we see images, so VR caught my attention in that VR is a moving image that appears to surround you.
I got my first probability to work with VR a number of years ago when the Royal Academy in London commissioned me to make a recent work with the HTC Vive headset, that hadn’t been released yet. I worked using a sculpting app called Kodon and with the coder there to make a recent paint tool that permit viewers spray paint the sculptures.
What’s the creative process like when working with VR?
Adham Faramawy: I suppose that depends. When you’re making an environment, game or recent tool, the strategy of animating on Unity or working with coders may be pretty dry! But in case you’re using one among the brand new drawing or sculpting apps, I suppose it might probably be pretty silly, performative and fun. I’ve found the apps I’ve used quite prescriptive though.
What are you working on next?
Adham Faramawy: For the time being I’m working on a few 360 dance videos, which I’m prepping to shoot without delay! I haven’t worked with 360 cameras before or with traditional choreography so I’m really enthusiastic about this. Watch this space.
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