Born to Egyptian parents living in Kuwait, Ibrahim spent his childhood between Bahrain and Egypt before moving to the US at the age of thirteen. Not tied to a specific geographical place and national identity, Ahmed moves within a different realm of ‘belonging’, more composite than the usual rigid societal categorization.
The body of work he is currently working on is an insightful continuation of a previous project that goes under the title Hafriyat (2013). The word (meaning ‘results of one digging’ in Arabic) describes a series of paintings where Ramadan Fabric is layered with gold and black paint. The choice reveals a highly symbolic meaning: fabric, gold and black refer respectively to the history of cotton, gold and oil, the driving sources of colonization. The focal point of the work is discussing the method of systematic cultural erasure that the settler imposed on the colonized. Layer after layer, Ahmed deeply interiorise the identity of the painting itself. The artwork serves to understand and analyse the historical events and to virtually overturn them creating maps of new identities born out of the decay of colonization.
Under the title of ‘There is no clash’, the current work wisely builds on Hafriyat and pushes forward not only its aesthetic but also its original conceptual approach. Here, different kinds of fabrics lay one over the other, at times fading and disappearing while overlying with layers of paint of the most diverse colours. The medium is meaningful and never random: both the paint and the textiles chosen recall specific countries and identities, with their patterns, motives and shapes.
The development of the aesthetic reveals once again a more nuanced and aware understanding of the significance of the work. What deeper and intricate meanings are hidden between the layers of textile and paint? Resembling imaginary maps, the works recall the lands of colonized countries, as intricate as the weave of the fabric itself. Indeed, his work focuses on dismantling social constructs created out of colonial conquest: Ahmed investigates into the complexities of identity as a social and historical construct, questioning what it means to be ‘authentic’.
Colonialism and the subsequent division of the world in the dichotomy colonizer/colonized led to the construction of the notion of the so called ‘national identity’, firmly opposing a supposed ‘Us’ versus another, far and suspicious ‘Them’. The end of colonialism and the post-colonization/de-colonization process – if ever one existed, actually reinforced this oppressive and exclusive dichotomy. History has however witnessed since the ancient times movements of people implying inevitable contacts between different groups and influences upon each other. These encounters and exchanges have contaminated a supposed authentic and incorruptible self, thus entailing a reinterpretation of the familiar notion of identity, described as a complex and blurred subject (a ‘third’ or ‘in between’ space). A subject of ‘becoming and being’ identity is in a constant state of flux brought by social, political and cultural interactions between individuals of various backgrounds.
The work of Ibrahim Ahmed draws a parallel between these theoretic debates and the artistic practice, using the power of representation to shift from easily definable categorizations. His diasporic condition, or what I would define an ‘identity in migration’ is embodied by the layers of fabrics and paints which subtly express the heterogeneity of his ‘identity’. At the same time, the bind of the fabrics and interweaving between them symbolise and reconstruct a wider and global net of movements, migration, contacts and interactions together with the heritage of the past and the present. The choice of colours and fabrics analytically recreates a complex historical and social context, where each piece of cloth or nuance correspond to a group interacting with another in a specific time and space. What is lost and what remains? What is authentic and what has been, instead, contaminated? The work allegorically succeeds in portraying an all-inclusive identity which proves to be part of an amalgamation transcending national borders.
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