Human Condition Interview with Róza El-Hassan

Author: Barbara Dudás

Published on: 04.11.2015

http://artguideeast.com/main-news-stream/2015/11/04/interview-roza-el-hassan/

Róza El-Hassan is a Syrian-Hungarian artist, activist, lecturer, author of the

website called Syrian Voices Mediation and Art who lives and works in

Budapest. In the following interview she talks about her artistic practice as

well as her socailly engaged design projects.

Barbara Dudás: You became known in the Hungarian and international art scene

in the 1990s, after finishing your studies at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts.

Could you tell us something about your university years – in Hungary and then in

Germany? Who were the artists, theorists, movements that influenced your work

during your studies?

Róza El-Hassan: Dear Barbara, First at all, I would like to thank you for the

possibility to give this interview. Actually I do not know exactly what to answer to

these first questions, much has been written about the nineties.

There were a lot of theoreticians such as Boris Groys or Slavoj Žižek, who were

important – although, when I was really young and started to make art, it was a

woman painter Frida Kahlo from Mexico who was my guide. I studied painting and

later we founded the Intermedia Department in Budapest, then I left Budapest and

went to Frankfurt Städelschule where I had the opportunity to spend a year in

Martin Kippenberger’s class. Earlier, in 1989 I participated actively in the reform

movement at the Hungary Academy of Fine Art then the following years of art

theory, philosophy and media theory at the Intermedia Department had a deep

impact on my work. Tamás StAuby, Miklós Peternák, Bacsó Béla, János Sugár,

Dóra Mauer, Vilém Flusser, Ivan Ladislav Galeta and many others gave great

lectures about the deep changes in society, which happened parallel to the so called

media-revolution caused by the technical invention of the internet.

Enigma, 2013, wood,

appr. 111x 58,5 x 36 cm, photo courtesy Gallery Thomas Erben, Private

collection New York

BD: It is often said about your works created in the 1990s – such as the stretched

objects or the basalt rocks with pins – that even though they can easily be

associated with conceptualism, yet they derive from a very personal experience /

relationship (with the material, the philosophical ideas, etc.) that creates an extra

layer when approaching the pieces, installations. During this period you exhibited

at the Venice Biennale, at Manifesta and at the two major exhibitions (Aspekte-

Positionen and After the Wall) that are extremely important in the contemporary art

history of the Central-Eastern European region. How would you summarize the

1990s, what were the most important aspects of this period in regard to your work?

RE-H: The special value and deepness of the change in Hungary in 1989 was

exactly the mildness of the political turn. As artist we did not feel that it would

have been necessary to work on the destruction or deconstruction of earlier political

symbols, we just left them behind and worked on the field of philosophy,

conceptual art and the meaning of new media. There is always a strong desire for

continuity in the Hungarian society and people try to avoid ruptures caused by

(changes of) ideologies as long as possible. Although we were really lucky as well,

the police did not shoot. Still, I was somehow unsatisfied with the outcome on a

mental, social and personal level, so my first artwork was the stone with colored

pins (which was basically a homework for our professor Tamás St.Auby, who

asked us to make a work on the notion of “spectrum” for a show at Újlak

space entitled Spectrum). St.Auby made a wrapped monument that time, the

Freedom Statue on Gellért Hill and named it the Sculpture for the soul of freedom.

My piece, also called Spectrum, represents the lack of balance or inequality with

the offensive small needles and the heavy and hard basalt stone. It was somehow

the result of a loss of perspective, emotional, physical barriers, which I faced as a

woman or rather as a human being locked in time and psychological conditions.

Still there was always some self-irony about it. It was also about the notion of

materiality, since it was embedded in a media exhibition among flickering

immaterialized monitors, works by friends. Later I created new versions of

Spectrum and the meaning shifted towards the barriers of life and departure.

BD: Drawing has accentuated importance within your artistic practice. What role

does drawing hold in your life? When working on a new series or starting a new

research how do you use drawing? How has your relationship with drawing

changed throughout your career?

RE-H: Drawing is a space between image and language or writing, something

where things gain a form, a calm space where we can come to decisions, a space of

contemplations. In 2012 the curator Anita Haldemann organized a retrospective of

my drawings at Kunstmuseum Basel, where I could see the development of my

drawings like an outsider starting with the drawings with tangle, rhizome, or

cosmos shape to political drawings and later design for wicker bags.

Beehive – house – inside the dome with window on the top, from the Series

‘Breeze 1’ , 2012, gouache, appr. 35 x 42 cm, courtesy Musée cantonal des beaux-

arts de Lausanne

Beehive – house – inside the dome with window on the top, from the Series

‘Breeze 1’ , 2012, gouache, appr. 35 x 42 cm, courtesy Musée cantonal des beaux-

arts de Lausanne

BD: In 2006 Műcsarnok / Kunsthalle Budapest organized a retrospective

exhibition of your works entitled R. thinking/dreaming about overpopulation. What

works have you selected for this show? Would you say that this exhibition serves

as an endpoint of a period in your life / career? If yes, what has changed since then?

RE-H: Maybe you are right, although I never considered a show as an endpoint of

something. It happened to me rather with texts. An analytic text could change the

content of my art, as it happened with Eszter Babarczy’s text around 1995 (Eszter

Babarczy, ‘The Works of Róza El-Hassan,’ in: Róza El-Hassan, catalogue. Knoll

Gallery, Vienna-Budapest, 1996). We analyzed the series of non-figurative objects

very precisely and this gave a new direction to my work.

I have to admit that since my young age I could not decide if I should be a

journalist, or an artist. In 2006 each object seemed like an event for me; Spectrum –

the stone with colored pins, the Stretched Objects, the figurative wooden

sculptures: R. thinking/dreaming about overpopulation, also the drawings are

things that show some kind of continuity in time. A collision of energies, therefore

it was somehow very difficult to place these events in the form of artefacts or

object and sculptures on human figures in the exhibition space. At the end of the

space was the stone heart entitled Adaptation, and there was a guest artist, my dear

friend Toma Sik, a great peace activist from the Middle East and Hungary, founder

of Gush Shalom, who departed in 2004. There was a corner in memory of him

showing his demo signs. There was also a video: R. thinking/dreaming about

overpopulation – questioning the notion of collective guilt and responsibility and

woman’s role, harmony and disharmony – mirroring the wars, which begun after

2001 and still continue.

Actually the social or political works started around 1998, when I met a great artist,

Milica Tomić from Belgrade at the Roteiros (Routes) section of the 24th Bienal de

São Paulo. She raised her voice for the human rights of people in Kosovo, after

which we started intensive correspondence, and in the following years the war

became worse and worse. We felt urgent necessity to make a statement against war.

BD: How did your collaboration with Milica Tomić proceed after 1998? What were

the projects you initiated together?

RE-H: We designed among others the T-shirt “I am overpopulation,” which is,

until today, a piece of provocative and playful anti-racist design. Milica Tomić

frequently organizes talks and discussions in Belgrade, Graz, Vienna and other

places. Recently, in 2014 she invited me to Belgrade.

Awake, 2012, wood, 210 cm high, artist’s collection, photo: Sarah Bernauer

BD: Social intervention and social design projects are very characteristic aspects of

your activity. Some of them are realized at public spaces – such as the Moszkva tér

– Gravitationproject (2003) – while others like the Syrian Voices and then

the Syrian Voices Mediation and Art project, are ongoing since years and

constantly documented at various online platforms. How did your interest turn to

social issues and ecological concerns? Could you define a moment, a specific event

that triggered you to become more active in raising awareness of certain (global)

problems?

RE-H: First at all, I would like to make a difference between Syrian

Voices and Syrian Voices Mediation and Art – we should not mix the two blogs.

Syrian Voices is floating like a cyber monument and no one can access it anymore.

I do not have the password and I do not know anybody, who would have access and

as far as I know, the system administrator died in Homs. I have no chance to

withdraw the two articles, which I published there. I curated several shows and if I

am asked to co-organize Syrian Voices Mediation and Art exhibitions I would like

to take a neutral position and show the multicultural face and exciting

contemporary art of the country and the broader region. Neutral is not even the

right word, our goals need be higher at this point: the goal is an impartial position

which is not indifferent, which has no neutral distance to injustice, but has a truly

positive human and emotional tie to all those who are involved in the conflict,

because only this can bring peace to the Middle East and also to Europe. And

besides that, art is not just about conflict, and nations, but also contemplation and

even humor.

Social involvement is not a theoretical consideration, but rather a moment of

absolute necessity to act and to make a statement against injustice with the means

of art or writing. It is the anger against injustice. From time to time I have

something to tell as a lecturer or curator, this happens more and more often,

sometimes it is just a piece of art, a human figure in the space, as it happened

at Moszkva tér – Gravitation in Budapest, where the figure was sitting on the

ground, taking solidarity with all those who are excluded from power or suffer

injustice.

Drawing, 2012, 25 x 35 cm

Drawing, 2012, 25x35 cm, artist’s collection

BD: Could you introduce us the Syrian Voices Mediation and Art project and its

stages / milestones in detail?

RE-H: This is a difficult question, since we are still in the middle of events and we

might make many mistakes with our interpretation.

Officially the Syrian Spring started in March 2011, still for me, it was not the

beginning. I travelled very often to Syria between 1998 and 2010. Somehow it was

much easier to purchase a plane ticket in the nineties than earlier in the seventies or

eighties. I learned to know the country, its beauty, its culture, the people, and I saw

also the problems. Year by year the river Orontes had less and less water, I saw the

young people on the street, most of them educated and not satisfied with their

possibilities and life. The worst was a permanent fear of the prisons in most of the

Syrian families.

Still there was also a lot of progress and kind of economic boom in the country, the

huge construction sites everywhere, the state of things offered a great value to the

citizens: this was peace. There was no war in Syria before 2011 and the country

was strong enough to host temporary up to five million Iraqi refugees.

Arab spring started early 2011, January. Tahrir square in Cairo was revolting, but

Syrians were still silent, it started in Syria only in March 2011. Most of the Syrians

hesitated to revolt, which would bring so much death as we could expect. In the

summer of 2011 European and Hungarian curators asked me to make a project and

research on the so called Arab Spring in Syria since I was up to certain degree an

expert on Middle East. Knowing Syria, I refused. I did not want to take

responsibility for anything, which will cost many human lives. Instead of that I was

watching TV with total depression. December 2011 I carved a wooden sculpture in

my studio in Budapest: Arab Spring in Winter, showing a demo sign with scared or

dead faces of the demonstrators, the fear of upcoming events. Still, in January 2012

I could not stand what I saw with passivity anymore. My artistic career was going

really well, I just had a big solo-show in Switzerland, so the question arises: could I

or should I have continued without political activity?

Arab

Spring in Winter, 2011-2012, wood, plate appr. 90 cm + handle, artist’s collection,

photo: Róza El-Hassan

I was not satisfied with the conditions of my life, I suffered from a permanent

isolation from people, which might have been caused by artistic success, permanent

travels and overwork. I was mainly curious about the intellectual circles and talks

in the moment of freedom in the Arab world and accepted the possibility to make

an artistic research and take some kind of responsibility for documenting and

interpreting the events. I left from Basel to Cairo University, where a big

conference entitled Narrating Arab Spring was organized by the Woman and

Memory forum. I felt restless, curious and isolated and had the earlier conditions in

Syria in mind. I expected that I would meet some Arab and British female writers

and we would have tea and talks: some kind of slowness and the feeling of warm

hospitality, which I loved and which I knew from my earlier visits to Syria.

Instead of that however I found myself in the middle of an international conference

with eighty lectures within three days in five rooms and simultaneous translations,

all English Arabic. There was also a Hungarian professor, a lecturer. But where

were the Syrians? I addressed one of the organizers in English pretty naively:

“Hello, are there any Syrians in the conference? I would like to meet them.” The

answer was very formal. “I am sorry to disappoint you, but there are no Syrians

here.” She looked at me and after a while she added: “You are the only Syrian

here.” How did she know about my Syrianness with my Hungarian English accent?

And why were they so rude not to invite any Syrians? Still, on the second day I

noticed some people in the conference who were sitting most restless and nervous

on their chairs. One of them had really big eyes from excitement when the

keywords of “social change” were mentioned in the lecture room, not to speak

about the keyword “Syria.” There were Syrians around. All were anonymous. Later

I was told that I was the most suspicious Syrian, because I was hanging around

alone in the courtyard in the coffee breaks and did not know anybody. Neither the

oppositional Syrians in the audience, nor the governmental people revealed their

Syrian identity; the Syrian documentary horror film was running alone in a dark

lecture room – in silence – without a lecturer.

Beehive – house – inside the dome with window on the top, from the Series

‘Breeze 1’ , 2012, gouache, appr. 35 x 42 cm, courtesy Musée cantonal des beaux-

arts de Lausanne

In the following years all what happened was still like an intellectual vortex, I spent

years with the intellectual analysis of the art-archives and events, and got to know

many artists and made a blog named Syrian Voices Mediation and Art, trying to

understand all what happened in Syria and here in Europe on a broader scale. It is

hard to speak about the mixture of suffering, desperation and hope. I belong to

those who would accept today’s unconditionally peace. Still the conscience said

and still says today that we cannot leave others in prisons for political reasons and

for free speech. No matter which country and which nationality, I would say the

same. I dream that the president gives a broad amnesty and a time of consolidation

starts.

BD: Can your artistic practice be separated from the social design projects or rather

the two are deeply interconnected, intertwined by now? What are you working on

at the moment?

RE-H: Earlier I did many figurative objects, but since end of 2012 I worked mainly

on design for ecological building and adobe houses. I started the design work

already in 2009 in Hungary in Romani poverty districts and villages with the

wicker handcraft project titled NoCorruption. Since the beginning of the industrial

revolution there is a lot of capacity and need for handcraft.

No Corruption Bag, 2010, suitcase or laptop holder for businessman - this model

with stockings and holes was made in cooperation with Andrea Kesserű

The ecological adobe building might be useful shelters, houses and round domes of

pure earth to protect those who lost their homes on the globe due to wars or

earthquake, and times will come when the countries will be rebuild. I wrote about

thirty articles on Syrian Voices Mediation and Art.

I like earth (soil) as a material for building, it is warm, very natural and there is a

big freedom of the forms. It is not just a poor material, rather something very

valuable with great artistic and design potential. I have to admit, I have a pure

artistic visions for architectural forms and houses and drawings, colors based on the

material of sun-dried and healthy material of earth and adobe: exploring the

possible and playful forms offers a deep aesthetical pleasure beyond social

consciousness.

A house is a positive symbol and it harbors in fact home and family, it is the vision

of protections and it stands for inner harmony, and a protective peaceful place on

the globe and in our minds.

Breeze 7 Antwerpen, 2015, adobe house, installation in MUHKA, photo: Christine

Clinckx