Faisal Samra

Faisal Samra is one of Bahrain’s most famous artists... Discuss this article

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What’s your most recent work?
A chair with a big belly on which is written in Arabic, ‘The global economic power’. It is the chair of the global economic power that we have in the world which sucked up this money and it all disappeared, and that is the reason behind the crisis that we are in. They fill up their stomachs with all this money but it became un-useful for others. It is a chair, but you cannot sit on it.

Is this part of your famous Distorted Reality series?
This piece is the last piece that I did in the series, which is evolving and growing up. At the beginning I was talking about all the distortions around us. I was talking about the faking of reality. The distortion became a way of living. To be able to achieve anything, people need to use distortion in one way or another, including in the economy. That’s one of the reasons that we have an economic crisis, there was no transparency and we are faking the truth.

So, the series was a call to action?
My work is building an awareness [of this distortion] within me and within people. We have nothing to fight with, except to be aware. You can’t stop it, we are hypnotised by it. There are people who don’t control their time, who are in front of the TV and internet and they don’t select. Don’t let it use you, use it. Don’t be controlled by it, control it. You see people with their blackberry and it is like a tail, it follows them. These are contemporary problems that are affecting us deeply. And I cannot go and do decorative works while we are living a big issue here.

Where did the concept for this series come from?
I started thinking about it in 2005. I was driving one day and all of a sudden I looked around and I saw all of these commercials around me and sometimes you get tired of it, you don’t want to see anything. There was not even one square metre which was not trying to sell anything. And then I turned on the radio and there were commercials that were trying to sell me something, and then I went home and the same thing. And it came to me just like that. And I said, ‘These sons of guns are invading me everywhere – I can’t even have a rest!’ The first work I did was a video, I had a video camera and I started to improvise in front of it. I started using the canvases and trying to wrap it around my head and with that I created masks.

You are the most famous artist working in Bahrain, is that something that you feel comfortable with?
I am not a Bahraini, I am not a Saudi. I am a composition of a lot of things. I have lived in France, I have lived in New York, I lived in Beirut and I spent some time in the far east. I am a product of the world. I hate the classifications. If you want to look at papers, then I am Saudi because my father was Saudi. I am a Bahrain because my mother was Bahraini and I was born in Bahrain. But I am not limited in the culture of Saudi or Bahrain. I lived in France for a long time and that had a big impact on me, I cannot deny that. I wouldn’t be what I am if I did not mix up with all these other cultures.