DE51GN

Damascus-born, Paris-based fashion designer and artist Laila Muraywid treads the glamorous fashion world and the more profound art realm at the same time, not with caution but with a natural irreverence that reflects common sense rather than confusion and chaos. The artist is currently exhibiting her first solo exhibition in the region at one of Dubai’s pioneer art galleries– Green Art Gallery. The exhibition titled Blood Deeper than Shadows runs until June 25, 2009. DE51GN caught up with Muraywid to delve a little deeper into fashion, feminism and the fusion of two.

Laila Muraywid

From fashion and jewellery designing, how did you embark upon a more artistic journey? Of course the boundaries between the various creative disciplines have blurred over time, but how do you imagine your work– is it fashion inspired by art or art inspired by fashion?

For me there is no separation between what I did before and what I’m doing now, the hysteria and exaggeration of fashion reflected for me the modern anxieties; I find the word glamour more terrifying than assuring.

My sculptural jewellery are more like a talisman to protect its bearer from the outside world. I wanted women to be powerfully sexual and to use their sexuality as a sword rather than a shield. Women in my works are powerful and vulnerable; they are predator and prey. trying to be free in an unfree society. They know that they live in a tragic universe, an alienated world, surrounded by an unspeakable truth. I do consider fashion as something dead, it’s so disturbing to see a beautiful woman as a lifeless corpse in the pursuit of fashion and as Baudillard said: “Imagine a thing of beauty that has absorbed all the energy of the ugly– that’s fashion.” I like men to be stunned by the entrance of a woman wearing my jewellery, but at the same time I would prefer them to keep a distance.

The body was and still is the center of my work. The body is a historically privileged cultural representation of the self, between the trauma that the body had and is still receiving (genocide and torture) and the bodily narcissism (fashion and the cult of the beautiful body ) my approach to the body is from the emotional side of it, a body that has suffered and lived.

Your photography comes across as a storyboard. How much time do you spend on each project like this? Do you often find yourself waiting for that perfect shot or do you simply express them as part of your ’story’?

The magic of photography is that it’s the object that does all the work, but what interests me is to take a subject from the real world, to excavate what’s hidden under what we think is reality and to make an image out of that. We always wait for the perfect shot, to know will the person facing you show you his secret identity, the mask hiding behind his real identity.

Finally all photos show the physical reality of the photographed object and the psychic reality of the photographer.

Are you trying to challenge hardcore feminist views through your works or is it more about the portraying the changing faces of the society today towards women?

Modern man is asked to have an exacting nature, any deficiency is not permitted, while modern woman is asked first to please herself, to be indulgent, kind and narcissistic. In reality, we keep on asking men to be soldiers and women to play dolls.

Women are asked to gratify themselves only in the sense of being able to enter as an object of competition in the masculine concurrence that is please herself in order to please others. Very rarely can she compete with men, but if she is beautiful, she’ll be chosen among other objects of desire such as cars,perfumes etc by men.

The feminine model is relegated,her determination is rarely autonomous. I have the impression that the structural hierarchical opposition between feminine and masculine is getting stronger and the mixing of tasks and social professional roles remain weak and marginal.

What is the most remarkable difference between Damascus- the city of your origin and Paris– the city where you are now based? Both the cities are romantic in their own way, evoking very vivid imagery. How does it affect your work?

I wouldn’t use the word romantic to describe any of the two cities, what interest me is an in-between city that doesn’t recognise any borders and tries desperately not to destroy the dream.

What is the best compliment you’ve received so far for your artworks/fashion/jewellery designs?

Very often people tell me when they see my work especially the sculpture,there is a sort of a shock,because it’s something that they never saw before, but still, it’s something that is part of them. It’s this contradictory feeling that interests me.

Who are your favourite artists/designers and why?

One of my favorite artists is Emil Nold who was an expressionist fascinated by the primitivism. Hans Bellmer and his work on the doll, Edward hopper and his work that bears witness to the pain of emptiness and to the immobility of time and surely Francis Bacon whose art is a method for opening up areas of feeling.

You are so multi-faceted being an artist, fashion/jewellery designer? Do you ever find the various mediums clashing with each other? How do you find a balance?

What’s great about humain beings is that they can create bridges leading to the inner space, out of disorder, without ever becoming confused.

Who or what inspires you?
Light and silence and life. It is art that makes life more interesting than death.

If fashion demands constant edge and imagination, what does art need?
Art needs a journey to an in-between world where the imagination and the real world are no more in contradiction.

The exhibition titled Blood Deeper than Shadows runs until June 25, 2009. For more information, contact Green Art Gallery at +9714 344 9888. All images courtesy of the artist and Green Art Gallery.