“Idols” (sculptures made of soft plasticine) – by Hamra Abbas

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AUTHOR SAYS: “Idols (2012). Over the years, I have consistently produced work that involves an element of interaction with its place of origin. It is so that I have been taking photographs of people in Cambridge and Boston over the last one year, and in Istanbul more recently, where I was invited to spend some time. During this time, news of economic slowdown, high rates of unemployment and the Occupy Movements have been constantly in focus in the media. This forecast of events seemed to be confirmed by the daily protests taking place across many cities. I began to take note of the quotidian in my immediate environment and took to photography as the most efficient means to do so. I photographed random people while running chores on a daily bases, photographing people working at the supermarkets, post offices, deli stores, restaurants, T stations, construction sites, street vendors, handy-men, and taxi-drivers etc. This gradually turned into a photo journal of the day-to-day. Asking to take their photograph for no reason other than my being an artist animated and displaced the moment, expanded time. In exchanging greetings, and short encounters, I realized how a quick contact and a conversation with a stranger, does entangle or compel us into a web of relationship, and has the potential to transform us. Later on, I started turning each photograph into a tiny sculpture and storing it away in a box. Over a period of time, I had a number of boxes, and hundreds of heads. 22 heads as prints are currently on display. Idols is an ongoing work.” (Hamra Abbas)

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Sources:

Hamra Abbas

yellowtrace.com.au