Soraya Touma

Gallery 01 : 2008-09

artist statement

' But the Dreadful has already happened. It has happened to us all...in a world in which the inner is already split from the outer. Without inner unity, with just enough sense of continuity to clutch at identity-the current idolatry. Torn, body, mind and spirit, by inner contradictions, pulled in different directions, man cut off from his own mind, cut off equally from his body- a half crazed creature in a mad world.' - R.D.Laing (The politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise. P 46-47)

Upon reading this text by the renowned Psychologist Dr Laing, I was struck by this explanation of Heidegger's phrase, The Dreadful has already happened. It literally moved me to explore the theme in this current series of paintings. Embedded collage and drawing of reproductions of my black a nd white photographs in the instinctive play of paint, I'm attempting to feel out the dislocation of our peculiar modern human dilemma. There is an attempted element of the confused, dislocated and unresolved in this series, mirroring our inner state.

He goes on to say, 'We must continue to struggle through our confusion, to insist on being human. Existence is a flame which constantly melts and recasts our theories...we hope to share the experience of a relationship, but the only honest beginning, or even end,may be to share the experience of its absence.'(p47-48)