East Tea Can
2023
130x115 cm
Acrylic on wood
Seated figure, flying teapot, broken teaware, red rooster hot sauce - soviet illustrations - istikana
photos by Andre Devill
There is power in the simplest mundane domestic consumed and accumulated objects, as they play a role in marking a moment in time and shaping our identity. The overall shape of the artwork depicts an istikana -the khaleeji tea glass- a word that originated during the British colonization of Iraq which means ''East Tea Can''.
The composition of elements portray a dreamlike state and feeling, including a childhood recurring dream. The scribbled figure and teapot came from a personal childhood drawing and it represents a recurring dream of being seated at a table not knowing where I was, Kuwait or Ukraine, my birth country.
The living room in that dream transports us to a landscape in a particular soviet children's book, where then combined with elements of a Kuwaiti sufra, which is the cloth on which the food in served in Muslim culture and by extension the meal itself. This liminal space translates the overlap of being physically in a place while mentally floating elsewhere; and also depicts a moment in time, perhaps a collective memory or of millennial Soviet and Arab childhood.
There is power in the simplest mundane domestic consumed and accumulated objects, as they play a role in marking a moment in time and shaping our identity. The overall shape of the artwork depicts an istikana -the khaleeji tea glass- a word that originated during the British colonization of Iraq which means ''East Tea Can''.
The composition of elements portray a dreamlike state and feeling, including a childhood recurring dream. The scribbled figure and teapot came from a personal childhood drawing and it represents a recurring dream of being seated at a table not knowing where I was, Kuwait or Ukraine, my birth country.
The living room in that dream transports us to a landscape in a particular soviet children's book, where then combined with elements of a Kuwaiti sufra, which is the cloth on which the food in served in Muslim culture and by extension the meal itself. This liminal space translates the overlap of being physically in a place while mentally floating elsewhere; and also depicts a moment in time, perhaps a collective memory or of millennial Soviet and Arab childhood.
