You're Pulling My Finger...

Poking at the definition of art

“So, those are pictures of your fingers?” I put on my practiced “impressed face” and nodded enthusiastically.

“And all the photos were taken with my mobile phone.” The artist added with equal enthusiasm.

He went on to explain how inspiration struck one afternoon while painting the interior of his house. Playing around with different concrete stains, architect Bassem Al Mansour dipped his fingers in red, then yellow paint and when he looked as his hand saw that his digits resembled the forms of people. He ran from one window to the next trying to find the best light that would bring his finger family’s stories to life.

The result was a duet exhibition, called Familiar Matters (his fingers and the print work of a friend/artistic partner), showing unframed photos with such titles as “Grandmother – grandchildren,” “Engagement blessings,” “Grandmother kisses the bride,” “We agree on the marriage,” and “The Visit.” Each role in the saga played by Bassem’s paint-covered keyboard tappers.

As an editorialist, amateur art critic and sometimes cynic, I’m not sure how to feel about this exhibit. For my magazine review I will, no doubt, spin it positively, noting the unusual whit of a story told, literally, with finger paint. It takes a curious and unaffected mind to see painted fingers and look for a story rather than the nearest sink and bar of soap. The repetitive simplicity of a blue background with red and yellow objects in the foreground reassures my comfort with primary colors and his descriptive titles cause a quick snort of a smile.

All these things are much appreciated in Kuwait, a somewhat sober and irritated place. Goofy humor and adult playfulness without illicit underpinnings are rare. Maybe too rare to entertain the funny bone of the local art socialites. The overall low attendance and rapid exit of those visitors might suggest non-interest, confusion, distaste or just disappointment that so few other gallery snobs will get to see them in their new Luis Vuitton shoes.

On the cynical side, I wonder if Kuwait is so parched for humor that pictures of someone’s fingers, taken with a mobile phone, enlarged, printed and hung with Scotch tape can get an audience in one of the country’s premier fine art galleries – a gallery that also holds an original Warhol. I wonder if this is another example of the small-pond-syndrome that surrounds this tiny, filthy, rich country. We say it all the time: You can be average anywhere, but in Kuwait you’ll be exceptional and my skepticism raises an unimpressed eyebrow at the “art” exhibit of which I am professionally obligated to give a positive review. In the end I'll appease myself with the fact that I like the artist personally and the praise is going to a well-deserving person.

Would Familiar Matters make it into an art gallery in London or New York? I wouldn’t know – what do you think?

Kitten-Shirt-Guy, You're Up

It’s about time I talk about Kitten-Shirt-Guy. He and I have never actually met, but we see each other most mornings in the weight room of the gym at the Holiday Inn. I’ve not met him on purpose. I like my name for him and I don’t want to feel obligated to call him by his real name, if only in my head and to those lucky enough to hear my tattles of his exploits.

Kitten-Shirt wears sunglasses. All the time. They are the black, biker-style, wrap-around kind and I wonder if he wears them brushing his teeth in the morning. I wonder if he does brush his teeth in the morning. I’ve deciphered from his Arabic slang (he spends half his gym time on the phone) that he is Kuwait and Kuwaitis aren’t known for their dental regimen.

Kitten-Shirt is bald – shaved head – so he’s fierce, not follicle-y challenged. The extra-thick mustache is added proof of that. Kitten-Shirt is shorter than me and wears Zumbas pants. Remember those? MC Hammer’s version of chef pants. He also wears black Converse with white laces, his only redeeming fashion quality. But, as you would guess, Kitten-Shirt is so named because of his choice of torso coverings. He favors the muscle-baring, low-cut "nipple shirts," as I like to call them; the weightlifter's answer to the spaghetti strap girly-tank.

There I was, doing my usual routine of lunges and twists when I saw it: A brilliant white, cut-at-home nipple-shirt tied in little knots at the shoulders (to give just the right amount of peek-a-boo cleavage) and decorated with an adorable iron-on tiger kitten front and center. I think he made it himself. Biker sunglasses, mean face, inflated muscles with bulging veins and a tiger kitten – cute as a button – on his skimpy shirt.

Sadly, Kitten-Shirt-Guy is the most entertaining anecdote of my mornings. I wonder what he will do tomorrow… Must work-out to find out. And that's turning a frown upside-down.

Fun Like White People

“Hello Jordan, you were always my favorite New Kid,"said my derisive husband as we turned off the highway, heading from Queen Alia Airport to our first hostel destination in Madaba, Jordan. I punched the #1 button on our rental car’s preset radio stations and Fergie’s voice came crashing through the airwaves, “When I’m in Jordan I listen to 97.1, Jordan’s No. 1 hit Radio station!” No way, Fergie has been to Jordan before me? I thought to myself. Natasha Bedingfield’s latest jingle, a duet with the comeback Backstreet douche-bags, kicked in as we drove past a well-lit advertisement for a new suburban development featuring the smiling faces of White couples and happy parents swinging their red-haired youngling between them. Our tourist-level-deep Jordan experience was yet to come, but the first initial splash with the cool spray of Western white-wash sort of stuck with me.

It got me thinking of all the other advertisements and White people imagery I’d noticed in my limited travels through the Arab world. It would appear that when the message is fun, relaxation, convenience or fulfilment, the preferred spoke models are of the more pasty variety. Stroll past any “Coming Soon” boarded storefront of any mall in Kuwait, Bahrain and the Emirates, or skim the brochure of any health spa, hotel, restaurant or shopping center and the gleaming, naturally pink complexions of attractive Crackers staring back at you with placid blue and green eyes. It’s like they’re saying, “Look, look, live here and live like White people.” “Drink this and you’ll laugh like White people.” “Don’t you want your banking experience to be like the White people? They never have to wait in line – see how they’re smiling?”

I wonder how many smiling White people the proprietors of such ads have actually encountered in the Middle East. I’m certainly not one of them. I've got a well-practiced angry face that I wear everyday in Kuwait. I forget to turn it off, sometimes, after I've left the country. I still remember reactions from beach goers with vacation buzzes when I was in Thailand. Someone actually stopped me to ask what was wrong... "Did something bad happen to you?" they wanted to know. The look is one of defiant indifference and slightly hateful complacency. It takes about as much work to perfect as Zoolander's "Blue Steel." It's my only armor in an amorous and sexually repressed world where men assume a woman solo is a woman soliciting.

I'm not the only one with a Blue Steel, everyone around here, talking about Kuwait now, looks slightly hateful and indifferent. Eye contact is either a personal insult or a personal invitation and a smile, my God, a smile is practically a public display of orgasm. I'd venture to say that both genuine smiles and orgasms are rare for women in the Middle East. An increase in one would probably lead to an increase in the other and so far, I haven’t seen it. In fact, I can count on one hand, using only three fingers, the number of times I've seen people with the look of bliss about them. I'm talking about just random occasions when a person looked happy for no reason at all; everyone beams when the first bottle of real Johnny Walker Red comes out.

Occasion One: Marina Mall, the local cruise spot for adolescent boys of all ages and gaggles of girls whose layers of skin-tight clothing are surpassed only by the layers of make-up they're wearing. The husband and I were at the food court, waiting for a movie to start and I couldn't stop myself from noticing a young-middle-aged woman with her family seated near by. Trying to figure out why my gaze was so drawn to a very normal-looking woman in a very normal situation, I realized that she was smiling. She smiled at her kids and her husband. She looked bright and happy. It was the first time I'd seen this since moving to Kuwait.

Occasion Two: Stuck in traffic on Arabian Gulf Street, I looked toward the seaside, as I often do when traffic is slow, to see if I could separate the color of the sea from the sky. The coast to horizon of Kuwait is like one big yawn of faded blue-gray, but today I saw something that made me laugh out loud. Not in an “I laugh because I need to find humor so that I don’t cry” kind of way, no, it really gave me the giggles. A large-ish woman, wearing a black abiya and hijab, had turned out of the morning rush hour, parked her car in front of a small playground and was vigorously pumping her feet back and forth, swinging gleefully on a yellow, dinosaur-headed swing-set.

Occasion Three: At a "beach party" hosted by a friend's event management company I was coerced into being their photographer for the day. The day’s activities were many of the typical picnic games I remember playing as a kid: dodge ball, volleyball, tug-of-war, potato sack races, and others. People in their early twenties in America would not have paid $50 for boys and $35 for girls to attend such an event, especially without free alcohol and definitely not if alcohol was prohibited. But these kids ate it up. There were around 150 young people, running around like 5-year-olds on a pint of ice-cream and pound of cake frosting. One guy in particular, had an overload of good feelings and stopped mid-bolt to scream. Eyes wide, fists clenched, he dropped to his knees still screaming joyfully, not knowing what else to do with the foreign emotion.

Which brings me back to my observation of White people representing fun; is happiness really a foreign emotion to some people? A day outside on the beach, playing games with a mixed (“mixed,” meaning boys and girls together) group of friends seems pretty normal to me. Exchange the beach setting for a wooded park or sunny field and you’ve covered the leisure activities of most American youths. We think nothing of talking and laughing in the presence of girls and boys we know and don’t know – it’s not even really classified as “fun;” it’s just normal. Compare to the three marked occasions of happiness in three years of living in Kuwait.

Maybe it just looks unnatural to have smiling Arabs on advertisements and “fun like White people” is just more believable. I don't know, but can anyone tell me where they at?