Abstract
All images are courtesy of BintaZarah Studios.
The artworks used to create this visual essay borrow from the language of advertising, popular entertainment and folklore. The use of these modes is intended to utilize and critique their global cultural appeal. The artworks are created by bringing together a variety of images shot by me as well as found imagery from commercial consumer sources. Meaning for these works primarily exists in between the elements brought together. The concern is not to pass definitive judgments on the cultures involved, but to provide a close reading of the cultural products and structures in order to better understand how visual media technologies influence and affect people’s daily lives.
I focus on the internal relationships of the individuals within the image, tempered by the surrounding power structures. The act of photographing the protagonists of these narrative images positions me as the narrator but it is important to note that the participants in the images also have agency as these are not staged moments, even though the very presence of allowing the camera into their personal lives for the production of public artworks introduces a certain vulnerability. It is this very vulnerability that allows the humanity of the individuals in the images to be captured. In an exhibition context, the majority of people in these images are reproduced at life size, forcing the viewer to contend with the protagonists as ‘real’ life people in real situations, rather than distant events in a magazine or postcard reality. In images where the people are smaller than life size the intention is to enter spaces of fantasy or desire, or to suggest something ephemeral such as a passing thought. Unlike science fiction, which deals with fantasy projections into the past or future, the aim here is to create an alternative imaginary that deals with what is currently real and possible.
While many of the works are panoramic, unlike early 19th-century panoramas, they claim no objectivity or the illusion of an ordered world. My panoramas do not present a world that is viewed from a centrally located platform or point of view with an artificial flavour that transports the viewer to an exotic locale. The aim is to produce an experience that is more closely related to life – a slice of life without borders or edges, multiple experiences and view points, fragments of experiences, less order and control.
The practice of montaging found imagery and images photographed by an artist questions assumptions we make about the photograph as reality; we often forget that the image-maker is implicated and holds a position or point of view. As you move through the visual essay you will notice that earlier images had goals of repositioning the black female through a process of re- and defamiliarization as an active self-agent. In later works, although this stance of repositioning still exists, it is less of a central focus. I think what may be in the foreground of later images is an attempt to strategically focus on deconstructing aspects of the image as a method for challenging conventional perceptions and attachments to static ways of looking. This is done through layering and compositing of multiple images, multiple viewpoints and even contradictory shadows, questioning the common authoritative stance of objectivity in photography. My preoccupation with power dynamics and social justice remain continuously present in all of the works. This can often be seen in the mirrored labor of both the artist and the female protagonists: sorting, mixing, restructuring, constructing, contesting, conflating and reorienting current politics and commerce – a chance to retell histories and restructure current hegemonic conditions.
Images of labor should not be seen as a code for human value but as questioning production as mutated digital codes are arranged and organized to read as an image that is ‘real’. Domestic home life signifies simulated assembly-line labor: a labor of creating visual religious, political and commercial icons for consumption because production has mutated into code. The cultural saturation of our image-based culture leads to a circular system of images referencing each other infinitely. Neither image-maker nor viewer can escape the image devices or the input of the hardware and software conglomerates that are ever present; thus we are all implicated and have a responsibility for the existing systems.
Spinner and the Spindle, 1995, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 76 × 50 cm
Sibling Rivalry, 1995, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 50 × 76 cm
Town Square, 1995, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 91 × 121 cm
Village Spells, 1996, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 90 × 125 cm
Iyali (Family), 1998, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 121 × 170 cm
Working Woman, 1997, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 128 × 121 cm
Day Dream, 1998, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 121 × 147 cm
Bath Time, 1999, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 121 × 133 cm
Lady and the Maid, 2000, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 108 × 45 cm
Robo Makes Dinner, 2000, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 274 × 115 cm
Minor Control, 2005, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 96 × 243 cm
A Conversation, 2001, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 110 × 121 cm
Dream Team, 2009, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 91 × 152 cm
Shopping for Essentials, 2009, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 853 × 1,290 cm
Money and Matter series
Left, top to bottom
Riches and Restraints, 2002, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 35 × 76 cm
Currency and Constraints, 2002, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 35 × 76 cm
Assets and Anxiety, 2002, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 35 × 76 cm
Centre, top to bottom
Funds and Force, 2002, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 35 × 76 cm
Investment & Innocence, 2002, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 35 × 76 cm
Profits & Proficiency, 2002, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 35 × 76 cm
Right, top to bottom
Pay and Play, 2002, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 35 × 76 cm
Liability and Liberty, 2002, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 35 × 76 cm
Expense and Exploration, 2002, computer montage (inkjet on vinyl), 35 × 76 cm
Footnotes
Biographical Note
Fatimah Tuggar is a multidisciplinary artist who uses technology as both medium and subject in her work to serve as metaphors for power dynamics. She combines objects, images and sounds from diverse cultures, geographies and histories to comment on how media and technology diversely impact local and global realities. Fatimah is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Memphis.
Address: Department of Art, University of Memphis, 200 Art & Communications Building, 3715 Central Avenue, Memphis, TN 38152-3140, USA email: