ABOUT 'IMPRESSION, PROCHE ORIENT'
In January 2010, Tom Bogaert began working on ‘Impression, proche orient' (IPO), an art project referencing issues relevant to the contemporary Near East society including the changes, politics, artistic identity and the new Arabs. Drawing on his experience as a European living and working in the East, it is the artist's intention to interpret understandings of the region - or lack thereof - from the inside out. As an outsider with the privilege of being given access to the inside, the aim is to use irony, gesture and narratives from the region by means of artistic production.
The first exhibition of IPO was at Makan Art Space in Amman, Jordan in April 2010, after a three months intensive residency. Since then Bogaert has gone on to create IPO chapters in Syria with Le Pont Gallery in Aleppo and All Art Now in Damascus, as well as in Ramallah and Birzeit, Palestine in collaboration with Triangle Arts Trust | Al-Mahatta Gallery. IPO investigations planned for 2011 include Gaza City, Lebanon and Egypt.
Tom Bogaert ended up in the Orient by accident and he does realize that the issue of Saidian Orientalism - prejudiced outsider interpretations of the East as surveyed by Edward W. Said - that pervades his work is problematic. Constant self-examination and -criticism have indeed confirmed that there is very little moral higher ground for him to be left standing on. At the same time Bogaert seeks to be more than a mere Accidental Orientalist. Edward W. said: "there is, after all, a profound difference between the will to understand for purposes of co-existence and humanistic enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate…"
While he fully recognizes the fluidity of geographies and the reality of a pan-Arab identity, Tom Bogaert is fascinated by national identities created by political boundaries drawn onto maps sometimes only 50 years ago. IPO in many ways is a topographic review of the countries, territories and nation states of the Near East.
The symbolic references of the individual chapters are quite simple, but through twisted starting points such as the cucumbers and Mercedes Benz in Jordan, simple images of representation become building blocks for deeper analysis. In Syria it was the story about doctor Bashar al-Assad: like a tragic story from One Thousand and One Nights. In Palestine, the artist worked with Ariel washing powder bought in the settlement of Ariel. ‘Impression, proche orient' is a reductionist experiment.
Tom Bogaert cannot predict how future chapters of IPO will look like. He is working like an explorer or archeologist with a plan yet open to unexpected discoveries along the way. Whatever tangibles and intangibles the artist will encounter – including political context, language and human interaction he will delve into and use what is valuable.