Collective
Gallery, Edinburgh until March 29th
Four
stars
Through
the window from the inside of the Collective’s Hillside gallery you can see the
wall surrounding the venue’s buildings. In the context of Sulaïman Majali’s constructed
interior for this latest edition of the Collective’s Satellites programme for
developing artists, it’s easy to think of biblical Jericho, 1970s Berlin, the
Gaza Strip or Trump’s Mexican fantasy.
Inside,
Majali draws from ideas of diaspora and imperialism in the wake of racist
graffiti on a mosque in Cumbernauld that gives the show its title. A row of
four grey/black plastic bucket seats are lined up opposite a microphone stand beside
a stage monitor in the corner. The monitor broadcasts a looped collage of anthropologically-inclined
field recording fragments that move from hushed mantras to electronic hums and
heart-beat percussion.
The
powerfully named ‘though we know the dream is built from the collateral of our
minds and the shrapnel that lies within it’ culminates with the last few
minutes of what sounds like a traditional middle eastern flute concert punctuated
by applause. In both its nomadic spirit and psycho-geographic ambience, Majali’s
42-minute sound-piece echoes work by the late Bryn Jones, aka Muslimgauze, who
drew from similar historical and geo-political sources.
Various
totems dotted around the room include a peacock feather; a strip of artificial
lemon peel curled up on the floor like a day-glo fossil; a 3D print of a
twelfth-century fragment; a star-shaped green mirror placed flat-earth style on
the floor. These are facsimiles of absorbed culture created for an imagined
fourth world, and this its museum’s waiting room.
But waiting
for what? For a performance or ceremony to begin? For integration? Acceptance? The
end of the world as we know it? Or just the tedious paperwork required to pass
through one border to another? Either way, the seats mark out a terminal bureaucratic
limbo as walls beyond come tumbling down.
The List, February 2020
Ends
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