C108 Review

Belfast: aimnín 'at Ormeau Baths'

aimnín: akhdar, 2004, live intervention at Ormeau Baths Gallery; photo Chérie Driver; courtesy the artist

 

The opening of True Colours - alluringly subtitled A meditation on the American Spirit - took place in the Ormeau Baths on 7 January 2004 and consisted of an exhibition of paintings created in response to the events of 9/11. Not listed within the collection of works was an intervention entitled akhdar, meaning 'green' in Arabic, by aimnín. In the action the artist placed a cassette player and a large ladder in the centre of the upstairs gallery space, masked in a balaclava. The artist pressed play and the sound of the Koran being sung ushered across the space; aimnín then preceded to climb up the ladder and perch there for the duration of the opening night, making paper aeroplanes in meticulous succession and continually throwing them through the air. As the paper planes accumulated on the floor, they were revealed to be green photocopies of individual pages from the Koran. This process was only interrupted to change the cassette and when the gallery closed.

akhdar was met with one of three reactions. Some people totally ignored the invisible person in the middle of the room while they intently scrutinized the patriotic works displayed around the circumference of the gallery. Then there was the audience who engaged and acknowledged the work, some of whom mistakenly thought it might be part of the official exhibition. Finally there was a very small minority who took offence. It was extremely refreshing to see the initiative and the considered response of this intervention, which took a firm and impression-making stance in order to question the jingoistic motives and hidden agendas behind this type of exhibition. The mysterious hooded figure created an extreme contrast of idioms by throwing paper Koran aeroplanes from a ladder, against a backdrop of the sort of paintings that wouldn't look out of place airbrushed onto the petrol tanks of motorcycles at a Harley Davidson convention in Arizona. With eagles and U.S. flags being a recurrent motif of many of the works, aimnín's action at the True Colours exhibition readdressed the balance of this forum, and it highlighted the level of and tendency towards nationalistic idealism.

John Mathews is an artist living and working in Belfast.

aimnín, performance at the opening of True Colours, Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast, 7 January 2004