What you see is what you get

Writing Workshops at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha.

Day 1

Today we talked about the basics of writing about images and objects, the agony of reading long sentences, and how to create big impressions in just a few words. Then the group headed off to the galleries to look at three artworks by Cai Guo-Qiang featured in "Saraab," jotting down three descriptive sentences about each piece. We reconvened and discussed what we'd seen, and, perhaps more notably, what we hadn't. 

Mathaf exterior

Mathaf lobby with Cai Guo-Qiang's Homecoming

Recording impressions of Cai's Endless

Writing three sentences about Fragile

Jotting down final thoughts about Fragile

Collective Impressions of Cai Guo-Qiang’s Fragile

Using notes and sentences written while in the galleries, workshop participants were divided into groups of three. Each of the trios assembled a description of Cai's Fragile from what they had written earlier—these  are published below.

Images of Fragile from Mathaf's website:

http://mathaf.org.qa/mathaf_cai_fragile.html

A huge display covering an entire wall, made up of 480 porcelain tiles. Each tile depicts garden flowers, the detail of which was so vivid as to make them appear real. Gunpowder is used to write the Arabic word hash, which, translated, means “fragile,” perhaps describing the relationship between culture and nations.

– John, Sanne, Marceli

A versatile piece of art that is intriguing to the eye from far and near, because the name of the piece, Fragile, indicates its intricate value. The negative aspect of the gunpowder and porcelain has an imbalance in its composition.

– Sunny, Emelina, Ilyas

A large single piece of creamy porcelain tiles representing different combinations of flowers with a single word in Arabic that is located mainly in the first third of the canvas. Each tile is about 30 by 40 centimeters, for a total of 18 meters length by 3 meter width. There is only one different element in the titles that is not a plant, and it is an insect (a butterfly).

– Manal, Heba, Pilar

From a distance the work seems to have a pattern, but looking closer at the work you can see that each title is individual and there is no real pattern. Gunpowder cascades across 480 porcelain panels, and your eyes are drawn to natural looking, handmade flowers.

– Maha, Maral, Juriaan

The 480 tiles of porcelain are mounted to fill up the whole wall of an empty white room. The black stain of gunpowder of the word hash in Arabic constrasts with the white and fine detailing of the flowers on the tiles. It symbolizes the fragility between human relationships and the Arabic and Chinese cultures clashing together.

– Luna, Rouda, Fahad

>>A big thank you to all who participated in and helped organize the first day of writing workshops at Mathaf. We will keep building on these solid foundations throughout the week — HG Masters.