Malak Elghuel
I thought if I could count you, mark you, hear you, then somehow I could trace you.
Just as I thought if I could note you, systemize you, hide you, then somehow I could trace me.
When I started, you were only 200k*; I thought no way I could reach you.
7 months later I'm still trying, but you went ahead and doubled on me, now I wonder if the 400k* is even there. But it is...
One, two, and maybe 7 of you were there for me to hear.
Sorry I meant I was there for you to share.
I asked you what, when, and where. You said here and there.
For some it passed, for most it's still there.
You shared, I heard, so maybe your here and there could be a sound for them to see.
Maybe then, as I play your here and now the traces of you could change your thereafter.
200k* internally displaced Libyans as of Oct 2019
400k* internally displaced Libyans as of April 2020
Malak Elghuel’s installation extrapolates from individual to collective units of information. Through her works on paper, she is asking: How can we concretize data and register sudden change? Can shared moments of rupture be quantified? She begins with the growing number of 400,000 Libyans internally displaced since last year as a primary data point. Elghuel charted a sequence of dots to represent this mounting figure – each session of mark-making completed in 40-minute slots. If I Could Count You is a 10-metre long comment on the impossibility of counting constantly changing numbers. In an act that humanizes scale, the artist’s body is used as an invisible means of measurement.
In If I Could Trace You…If I Could Hear You, she recorded seven conversations with displaced Libyans. Maintaining the anonymity of her interviewees, Elghuel’s art of concealment incorporates multiple data points (time and date of fleeing, access to former residence etc.) entered as holes punched into a music box, the resulting repertoire of sounds becoming an intangible part of the work.
By delving into stories from her home country that are difficult to contain, Elghuel has created a notational system as a means of representation, translation and reflection on the tyrannies of distance.
Malak Elghuel is a Libyan multidisciplinary artist with a graduate degree in Multimedia Design from the American University of Sharjah. She has exhibited her work in the green book exhibition at Le Cube Independent Art Room in Rabat, Morocco, Retracing a Disappearing Landscape in P21 Gallery London, UK, Art Jameel Youth Takeover in Dubai, UAE, and Pop Art from North Africa at the Casa Arabe in Madrid, Spain.
Through her work, Malak examines the social and political changes in the Mena region, specifically her home country. With a focus on time, as both a measure of change, an invisible vessel for documentation and as a medium.