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.
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.
Malak Elghuel's installation examines the social and political changes in her home country, Libya. Through a particular focus on time, as both a measure of change and a vessel for documentation, she questions the processes in which data of sudden and urgent changes is computed and registered?
If I Could Count You is a 10-meter long sequence of dots that depicts the growing number of internally displaced Libyans in the last years. Four hundred thousand dots are charted in a series of dots, with each session completed in 40-minute slots.
In If I Could Hear You, Malak shares seven recorded concealed conversations with displaced Libyans and incorporates numerous data points as holes punched into a music box.
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 Elgheul