Children of Yam
Shono’s debut solo exhibition at Athr gallery, Jeddah
Ink, paper, polymer sculptures, 2016
In this series of work, paper is seen as the land we find ourselves standing on and the Ink the forces driving us out of our lands. Together, the paper and ink are the record of events. We stand on pages with stories from the past. Pages we cannot open. A book of stories we cannot read. A document of lessons we cannot learn from.
Children of Yam explores these notions through the fictional story of Yam. The forgotten 4th son of the biblical and Quranic character, Noah. Yam refused to climb onto the Ark and chose to seek refuge on a mountain top instead. Though he was vilified in the religious narrative for disobeying his father’s commands, Shono saw in him a figure who chose to turn down doctrine and instead trusted in himself and in his free will. Fear of death did not drive him into the safety of his father’s faith. To that end the artist assumed that Yam had survived the deluge and his children became the refugees of the world, forever fleeing floods. His story and the story of his lost children is a story of immigrants through time. They are the forgotten, the inked over and the displaced. Shono draws our attention to the fact that though some of us are sedentary, we too were once, and again will be, displaced.
Curated by Maryam Ibrahim. Athr gallery, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia 2016
