The Unbearable Lightness Of Witnessing | Studies For A Self-Portrait

"If I go into a butcher's shop I always think it's surprising that I wasn't there instead of the animal." Francis Bacon

 

Witnessing violence

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You might not see its traces on your body, but you will certainly find them somewhere, between your first and second skin, in the salt of your bones or perhaps, in your spine.

How can I face the immense violence surrounding me? How can I frame it, make it bearable?

These questions have led me to rediscover Bacon's portraits, which at times appear as witnesses to pain, and other times are engulfed in it. Was Bacon "studying" how to trace the effects of pain on our "skins" - the wrapping of our souls - when he painted them?

Bacon was surprised not to find himself "there instead of the animal ". For eighteen months now* I have been wondering: is this not my own flesh that hangs there? 

 

When I started this project my main concern was finding an outlet for the images of violence that had become part of my daily life. Whenever I'd see them, my ghost hand would grope the areas of my face. I would wonder whether the gap in that man or woman's cheek has punctured my cheek as well… Is my mouth, which has become an extension of the remains of another's face, still in its place?

 

There is only one way to bear a violent scene: to pretend that the person in the image exists only inside the screen, as if one is watching a fictional film. The observer is convinced that what he or she sees has never actually happened.

I hold my breath, remove my glasses, and often mute the video attempting to remove reality from the horrific scene.

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It is impossible to comprehend the reasons for committing such violent acts on others. 

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When I revisited the faces of Francis Bacon, or his "heads" as he called them, I perceived them as a reflection of the pain resulting from the violence that had been exerted upon these "heads". 

There is a lot of flesh in his works, mutilated flesh taking shapes attributed to humans. 

The same flesh that Bacon painted there allegorically, was real. I began seeing Bacon's pictures on the screens. 

I knew I had to stop watching.

 

The Unbearable Lightness of Witnessing is an attempt to become one with those who have been turned into nothing but lumps of flesh. It is also an expression of what the soul becomes when watching them.

If my face were to take on the form of my feelings, the pictures you see are the image of my face, witnessing.

 

 

*The beginning of the Syrian revolution.