Athoub Al Busaily
Waltzing through borders initiates research between the term land and non-land. A hypothetical space filled with layers of metaphors, where border becomes a creature of science fiction. That invisible line that stretches towards the infinite horizon, seems so untouched, unbothered and exciting, yet we somehow carry it wherever we go. I slowly started building this romantic relationship with this sacred line, that I yet need to comprehend myself. To me, borders have always been circulating between real and unreal. A plot of land, but not a land, all simultaneously. The idea of borders have always been linked to a play of power, with and without a sense of balance. Fishing lures resemble that metaphor by the notations of the hunter and the huntee.
Without the need to document the state of non-land, the artworks are rather an embodiment of what that space feels or looks like. Non-land is a cumulation of metaphors like a reciprocated letter from a lover. Non-land is that deceptive and elusive creature that lures and camouflages into reality.
Athoub Albusaily’s latest work bridges notions of distance with desire. Driven by a territorial inquiry, Albusaily is interested in the markings and trappings of land, where borders become fictive cartographies. She links the seeming artificiality of borders to choreographies of hunting and dancing.
The hunter and the huntee is a work comprising eight shiny and seductive fishing lures, instruments of camouflage and deception. These mass-produced ready-mades are hybrid objects – accessorized and assembled with hooks and feathers by hand. In contrast, Albusaily’s hand-carved duck decoy represents the predatorial relationship without design or ornament. These objects reflect the artist’s impulse to anchor her encounters with land, and sea, where she considers mooring buoys as a kind of checkpoint or floating border for the ocean in her work, To become a lover in a single floating system.
Albusaily’s romantic relationship to her surroundings developed over years of hunting expeditions with her father in Abdali, Kuwait, next to the border with Iraq. Making sense of lines of demarcation sparked notions of non-territory, invisible markers that cannot be transgressed. In Plot analysis, Albusaily draws up a list of what constitutes non-land: “sand, organic matter …a yearning symphony…an itch in your throat.”
Athoub Al Busaily is a Kuwaiti artist currently living in Abu Dhabi where she is currently completing an MA in Art History and Museum Studies at Sorbonne University. Prior to that, she received her BA in Fine Arts from the University of Sharjah. She had her first solo exhibition in Kuwait following her graduation, and participated in a group show at the Maraya Art Centre Albusaily’s practice is a series of exploration revolving around a hypothetical place, where she digs into the mirage of our sensory experiences.