New Year! Same Body!!

Happy New Year My Munchkins.

hello hello. welcome to the new year, welcome to the newsletter. if you’re new here, i use this space as a vacuum to release and share, allowing my lil friends to breathe with me. the new year is here, it is the first, and i cannot be more thrilled.

this newsletter is about celebrating.

for the longest time, i have been infatuated with the body. how we carve it, drape it in silhouettes, design it in twinkles, form it, work on it, but nothing seems to be enough. i was looking at an artwork i made in my visuals arts course for IB, which is now pasted on my bedroom wall, of a sculpture of a womans torso with a naked tree growing out of the neck. as i stood there, cigarette in hand, i thought about why i am so extremely fascinated by bodies.

one of my favorite photographers, Damon Baker, works with bodies as a medium but in a more fashion-centric way. his works are usually always black and white, and highlight the body more so than anything else. his subjects are always found in the most eccentric forms, bringing in a sense of discomfort for the viewer.

my brain was running wild trying to figure out why i think the human body is so artisanal. why i create a lot around the body, taking up sculpting figures more so than anything else i do in university, taking courses that highlight body and working through it. i posed myself the question and, after much thought, i answered back.

there are so many sculptures and pieces of art that showcase the body or are mainly based upon the body, from the likes of Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Canova, Donatello. but this addiction didn’t end, we see it in recent times in the works of Yoko Ono, Marina Abramovic, Misha Japanwala, and so many more. the list never ends.

and i realized, my addiction is not with the body. rather, i am mesmerized by what is underneath. the body in art is soulless. the artwork, open to interpretation, in its essence remains meaningless because the subject in actuality has no meaning. if your subject is the body, your subject has no meaning because the body without its soul is meaningless.

my infatuation is with the soul. the soul i can never seem to encompass in an art piece because that can never be done.

which then poses the question of integrity. the same body placed in an art gallery is praised when it has no soul and can feel nothing. but that body with a soul and emotions steps outside the gallery and is tarnished. why do we praise the body only when it is made by us? is it the ego that humans made it? or is it the environment of a gallery?

we praise the curves of Venus of Urbino or Gustave Corbet’s Woman with a Parrot, but seem to can’t stand the woman in society having the slightest hint of a stomach, or even men for that matter. my main question is why is the body, when kept in a museum, so widely appreciated and interpreted but not outside of the four walls?

the song i have been listening to lately is I Know The End by Phoebe Bridgers because it is in my “I Left” playlist i made before leaving Bahrain and i miss my bh people so much lately. if you’re reading this and i know you from bahrain, i miss you my pretty.

so, in the beginning of the newsletter i said this was about celebrating. now that you’re here, i wasn’t talking about new years eve. gotcha.

what i want to celebrate today is our bodies. more importantly, the soul that lives within these bodies. since i moved to lahore, i have lost an exponential amount of weight. so much so that i went shopping for my brothers wedding and had to buy clothes in XS cuz S was too fucking big. no matter what my body looks like, no matter the number on the scale, i know that i exist in it and i breathe because of it.

our bodies came before us, and will stay right here when we leave. this earth is the only home this body gets. try to let it enjoy it.

until next time, ciao

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