“Skinned,” Nadia Abou-Karr, 2008

mixed media, paper, xerox transfer, gold colored pencil

Photo by Jason Matthews

“Remembering Om Mouwafad,” Nadia Abou-Karr, 2008

mixed media, glass, block print, onion peels, paper, xerox transfer

Photo by Jason Matthews

“Martyr’s Daughters,” Nadia Abou-Karr, 2008

mixed media, xerox transfer, personal photos

Photo by Jason Matthews

“White Boys Love War,” Nadia Abou-Karr, 2009

mixed media, paper, personal records, anti-Arab myspace group

Photo by Jason Matthews

“Self Portrait During Disassociation,” Nadia Abou-Karr, 2009

mixed media, rice paper, ink, fingerprints, cut paper, xerox transfers, experimental block printing, water

Photo by Jason Matthews

“Burial,” Nadia Abou-Karr, 2008

mixed media, paper scraps, onion and garlic peels, u.s. feminist honor killing propaganda

Photo by Jason Matthews

“Gate,” Nadia Abou-Karr, 2008

mixed media,  xerox transfer, paper pulp, acrylic gel media, metal rod, anti-Arab myspace group

Photo by Jason Matthews

my artist statement

I make art to heal myself and to imagine possibilities for the local and global communities I’m part of to be healed. I reveal connections and chip away at the dominant narrative. I seek to insert my marginalized viewpoint into the communications landscape, using art, writing, independent and new media publishing.

I write for survival and transformation, seeking hopefulness in the midst of disaster. In my writing I am a healing artist, connecting health, sickness, survival and art, analyzing destructive systems through my personal stories. When shared with other women, these stories become part of a collective analysis towards ending violence against us.

My works as a printmaker, zinester, blogger, and media justice organizer are tied together. They are all popular techniques that are used to communicate subversive messages. I studied traditional printmaking techniques in college (intaglio, etching, aquatint, relief, lithography, silk-screening) and now I use experimental techniques (xerox transfer, collagraph) working in a home studio. All of my techniques can be practiced from anywhere, for very little money and without access to a press or print studio. My print work blends DIY (“do it yourself”) culture, art therapy, experimentation, and poor peoples techniques and resourcefulness. I also create through performance and digital art.

In my recent mixed media work paper is my primary tool; I mold it, print things on it, tear it up, layer it. I layer paper scraps, piling different references on and working it to look like skin, to show the physicality of my subject matter and to reference art I make from my skin (when I cut myself, pierce myself, tattoo myself, it is related to my artwork and subject matter since these methods of expression are relics from ancient cultures surviving on the bodies of youth). I rarely use color. Most of my work is in the black and white, general neutral tones, skin tones and related to the body.

I pull from a stockpile of paper scraps, printouts of anti-Arab digital culture from MySpace pages, Christian Zionist message boards and military training sites, organic materials like onion and garlic skins, all types of paper and recycled images from photographs, zines, prints, drawings and other materials. I use anything I can find and I hoard interesting materials as a practice. I scavenge materials, use chemicals to transfer photocopies and printouts, layer more and deconstruct to obscure or reveal references, rework and modify what I have made over and over to show variations between stereotypes, reality, self-representation, experience. The work is about my own history of experiences with racialized sexualized abuse, suicide, mental illness and violence, healing, physical and mental health, personal identity and personal transformation as a 2^nd generation Arab American woman, bringing together examples and references without coming to a definite conclusion. I want to make the confusion visible and show interrelationship, a sequence of events, or a break in the sequence. It has ambiguous meanings, is audience specific with shared understandings in certain communities.

This work indicates a break from tradition and a desire to make new things never seen before. It grew out of experiences being harassed and threatened online for speaking truthfully about being Arab and Palestinian on my blog, and from previous work that sought to insert a positive visual image of Arabs by referencing family photos. It grew out of a lifelong curiosity and suspicion, dissatisfaction with “common knowledge,” and fascination with being in between, not one thing or the other, the stereotype and the real thing.

I was driven to create and publish my own art from a young age because what I was given in the mainstream didn’t represent me. I create from the clash between personal truth and dominant culture’s knowledge; what feminism, the u.s. government and mainstream media say about Arab women, Arab men, mental illness, addiction and poverty in our communities, vs. what I know to be true from experience, in the midst of a u.s. “culture war” that criminalizes Arab people’s art, culture and sentiment for being “unpatriotic”. My work is all about the shadows; ghosts of detached diaspora refugee immigrant dreams.

THE FOUNDATION | Women Of Color Speak Out Against Violence (Detroit)

THE FOUNDATION
| free admission | all ages | all are welcome |
TUESDAY JUNE 30TH @ 7pm – 2am

[facebook event page | click here for bigger flier]

WOMEN OF COLOR SPEAK OUT AGAINST VIOLENCE
using our arts & media skills to end violence in our communities

Come & learn more about the Allied Media Conference, a national event happening July 16th-19th in Detroit (alliedmediaconference.org).

@7pm | SELF PUBLISHING WORKSHOP: Learn how to end violence through creating and distributing your own magazine. Zines created at this workshop can be sold at elements.

@8pm | POETRY & PERFORMANCES: All women of color are welcome and encouraged to bring poetry songs, rants, dances and performance art to share. ALL WOMEN ARE ARTISTS! Come experience the endless creativity of women in Detroit.

@10pm | PARTY STARTS | DJS MEL WONDER & STICKY NIKI | BGIRLS MA-MA $ RIS MONEY
tshirts jewelry art music | bring ur stuff to sell | massages by angeline | live audio & video recording

ELEMENTS GALLERY @ 2125 MICHIGAN AVE, DETROIT
(near old train station across from slows)

[SPREAD THE WORD & BRING UR SISTERS, FRIENDS, KIDS, MOM, FAMILY, FELLOW SURVIVORS AND CREATORS!]

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i’m working on completely updating this website with a history of the things i’ve done so far, so i can figure out where to go and what to do next.