Friends,
It’s been a rough fortnight (month, year, decade etc.) which I’ve mostly spent sick at home, or tending to my sick son. Everyone tells you that daycares are basically disease pits and the first six months of “care” you pay for, you barely use, on account of your child being sick all the time and having to be home, and while I never disputed it, there’s a stark difference between being aware in the abstract and actually experiencing the horror firsthand. I’m recovering now, and my son has gotten better, but the timing meant I was unable to attend the Mudgee Readers Festival, which I was really looking forward to; one of the panels I was scheduled to speak on was with the NSW State Library. I have a featured article in the new issue of the library’s magazine, Openbook, talking about Casula Library, where I spent a formative part of my childhood, and the importance of that institution in my life. I firmly believe that the existence of libraries is the single thing that society has gotten right.
Sad as I am to have missed the talk, it was necessary to heal. After a fortnight cooped up at home, yesterday I read some poems at Mosman Art Gallery in support of my brother Khaled Sabsabi’s latest exhibition, Unseen. Khaled is an extraordinary Arab Muslim artist, born in Tripoli like my family, he was made a refugee in the civil war, and relocated to Western Sydney. He is of my mother’s generation, and our story overlaps in many ways, even as it also diverges. It’s difficult to encompass or overstate the legacy of his work, his artistry and advocacy; I’m awed by the impact he’s had in shaping so much of the arts ecology here. Not alone, of course, in collaboration, and moving always with a generosity of heart and spirit to evoke and transform his experiences through brilliant art but also to create pathways for others; to uplift, mentor, and envision a more inclusive future.
Unseen is comprised of 235 personal photographs, spanning over a decade in time, that have been steeped in ahwii, the swirl and grit of Arabic coffee. They line the walls, each one in exact alignment, like a row of dominoes, a cascade of discrete images distorted by the brown-black stains of omen. The floor is similarly stained, the lighting dim, an invitation and provocation all at once: what can you make of this? Standing there, I remember my teyta and aunties hunched over their coffee cups, spinning the ceramic in their hands, scanning the signs and portents left by the act of consumption, this godly alphabet defined by absence and so, truly in its essence, distinctly Arab. The unseeable photographs act as time stamps, marked and marred by their making, while the awhii-stained floor positions you figuratively within the cup, the mirk of the present. Throughout his practice, Khaled uses repetition to scaffold the infinite, and domestic elements to reflect the sublime; I’m reminded of his work 99, the micro-loop of a whirling dervish across ninety-nine single channel television sets, the discrete figure recreated and in the recreation, seemingly moving forward, a constant revolution. Trapped in time, the divine located in the minutiae of the everyday, be it the physical media of an old screen or photograph, or the ritual of the daily coffee.
Moving through Unseen evoked that same sense of trapped transcendence; you lurch for each tiny, fragmented glimpse of the familiar, desperate to be moored to the real, to your memory, your ridiculous sense of linearity, even as it showcases the loss of detail we accrue, and/or the impact of trauma. It’s not possible to cohere clearly, and so you are forced to let go, to flow through time, to let the omens be omens, and the world figure itself out. Or at least I was, and I did. I read some poems in this speculative space, and felt a sense of connection with Sabsabi not only as a friend, someone I am blessed to know, but as my brother in Islam and fellow artist grounded by a similar sense of profound spirituality and our shared culture. It was a beautiful day, one that was completely restorative. That he has been able to generate such a monumental body of work and make such an impression despite the many institutional barriers he’s faced, gladdens my heart.
Over the past year, I’ve been so completely burned out, disappointed and disaffected by the petty machinations of the arts industry—and I thank God for that now, truly. It led me to start A Western Sydney Book Club, bringing together readers and writers in the community with the help of my excellent co-producer Yamane Fayed. It led me to my new role as the communications lead for the Think+DO Tank Foundation, an independent not-for-profit arts org that focuses on multilingual programming for marginalised women and youth, through which I get to see the joy that art can bring to people when its divorced from industry and connected to community instead. Spending the day with Khaled, a day with art that pierced the threshold of time, made all this and more abundantly clear to me, alhumdulillah.
If you’re feeling burned out, stuck, or lost—trust that there’s a reason for it, and that recovery will come. You only need to give yourself time. It does not seem possible, I know, but the realm of possibility will expand after this necessary contraction. I have felt like ashes for a full year, like I was all the way finished and only now am able to say I see a way of returning to myself, returning to feeling, returning to love.
Salaam,
Omar