"Repetition" or Bn3eed Nafsna, "بنعيد نفسنا" is a project I started on 2013, during the peak of the “Arab Spring”, when I noticed how identical news titles of our current days were to those I found while flipping a stack of my father’s vintage magazines that belong to the 80’s and 90’s.
It is an ongoing project in which throughout these years it never becomes less shocking whenever a major event happens in the world to find a similar, and sometimes identical, news already documented in those magazines.
The purpose of the project is to document the repetition of events we live and witness, to raise the individual and collective awareness, and invite people to understand and analyze how history affects our life today. As George Santayana puts it in his famous saying: "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it".
To communicate my message in a bold way, I stamped the Arabic words on the magazine pages which had relative news using printmaking techniques. After conducting a font study, I selected one of the vintage fonts that were mainly used in news titles back then to visualize the message harmonically.
✼ Selected art pieces of the series were exhibited in Young Saudi Artists exhibition, Pulse, in 2017 at Athr Gallery in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. ↓
Photo courtesy of Athr Gallery.
Photo courtesy of Athr Gallery.
Photo courtesy of Athr Gallery.
At YSA exhibition, Pulse, in 2017 at Athr Gallery.
At YSA exhibition, Pulse, in 2017 at Athr Gallery.
The art pieces got selected to be exhibited at Abu Dhabi Galleries Week in 2018.
At Abu Dhabi Galleries Week in 2018. Photo courtesy of Athr Gallery.
The project was featured in Khabar Keslan Magazine, Issue no. 3 in 2018.
To read the full article, visit khabarkeslan.com/source
Khabar Keslan Magazine feature, Issue no. 3 in 2018.
Khabar Keslan Magazine feature, Issue no. 3 in 2018.
