Lamya Gargash : Isthmus

Isthmus is an exhibition that requires a poetic reading. I would go as far as proposing that the photographs on view all possess some kind of haiku qualities.

In traditional Japanese poetry, the preferred short form of haiku paints a mental image in the reader’s mind, by drawing attention to a slight detail of a scene that brings them back to the present moment. To focus on one element at a time is key to understanding Lamya Gargash’s photographs – a journey into the soul, into one’s nafs, from exterior to interior.

My first introduction to Lamya’s work was during a course entitled Foundations of Photography & Lens-Based Images taught in the fall of 2016 by the late Tarek Al-Ghoussein at New York University Abu Dhabi. Tarek had a special interest in showing us the work of UAE-based and Emirati photographers. Amongst his favorite was Lamya Gargash, an artist whom he taught years prior at the American University of Sharjah. He would always speak about Lamya with sparks of joy and excitement in his eyes, proudly showing us her photographs of interiors shot in the UAE.

As a final project for Tarek’s class, we were tasked to create a series of eight to twelve photographs. I went straight to Emirates Palace, the closest grandiose space I could find that resembled Lamya’s Majlis series. As a foreign student, new to Abu Dhabi, I was very curious to learn more about the stark contrast between lavish interiors and their surrounding landscape. I was fascinated by the mechanics of interior design choices that made up the unique 1980s and 90s Khaleeji postmodern decor: reminiscent of Parisian salons, but with the smell of bakhoor in the air – a whimsical take on 17th-century European rococo and neoclassical styles for the Arabian Peninsula. If walls could speak, what stories would they tell? Which conversations would they recall? Lamya’s photographs were my only clues to find out.

Six years later, an opportunity arose for me to curate the fifth edition of the East-East: UAE meets Japan exhibition series for Atami Art Grant, an annual art festival set in the quaint Japanese town of Atami, off the coast of Shizuoka Prefecture. Atami exemplifies Japan’s bubble era (1986-1991). Dubbed at the time as the ‘Monaco of the Orient’, Atami was a city known for luxury, leisure, festivities, relaxation, and volcanic onsen baths. Many hotels and resorts have been built along its coast, not unlike the coastal developments that the UAE has experienced over the past two decades. 

One of Atami Art Grant 2022’s venues was Hotel Acao Annex, a massive 19-floor hotel first opened in 1973, which had been closed to the public for the past decade. Lamya was the first artist I thought about when entering the ballroom entrance, going up to its seventeenth-floor Grand Chandelier Lobby, and down to the second floor for the Main Dining Nishiki, a massive grand dining area. Stepping into the hotel’s empty halls took me right back to 2016, walking into Emirates Palace with my Pentax K1000 in hand.  

Jumping to 2023, this solo exhibition at The Third Line premieres the photographs Lamya took at Hotel Acao Annex, as she traveled from Dubai to Atami to document this historical landmark, a moment in history. In dialogue with this new body of work is Lamya’s older series on the Queen Elizabeth II (QE2) cruise ship, an iconic British ocean liner converted into a floating hotel. Inaugurated by Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth in 1967, QE2’s first voyage took place in 1969 until its retirement in 2008. The hotel is now permanently floating in Port Rashid in Dubai, after its Dubai World acquisition.

Lamya’s approach to the objects she photographs makes us believe that interior spaces – especially hotels – exist beyond their mere materiality and substance. Selections of decorative objects, furniture pieces, window details, and wall trimmings speak louder than the sum of their design decisions. Each interior element embodies a human quality and expectations of audience preferences of a certain decade, socio-economic situation, and culture. To fully understand Isthmus, it might therefore be useful to rely on figures of speech. Metaphors, similes, allegories, and personification can be applied to this exhibition as smoothly as to verses of a poem. 

Reading Isthmus as a poem starts with its metaphorical title. “Isthmus” comes from a Latin word referring to a narrow strip of land between two seas, connecting two large land areas on either end. Lamya only needs a thin strip of land to carry herself, her tripod, and her camera. As she takes photographs, she creates isthmuses for herself and us, viewers, to move and navigate between seas and continents.

“Isthmus” is also a simile, as the exhibition connects two places that are fundamentally different yet share similar qualities. I invite you to look around the exhibition with a blank mind and guess which photograph was taken where. To see the interiors of QE2 right next to those of Hotel Acao is quite telling of the international styles preferred by sea-facing structures of the 1970s and 80s. The rounded-edge windows adorn both cruise ship and hotel, and even though both spaces were designed at opposite sides of the world, furniture pieces are difficult to distinguish from one setting to another. 

The last section of Isthmus is dedicated to Lamya’s most recent still life photography. Her sumptuous Family Still Life (2023)shows precious objects each symbolizing a member of the artist’s immediate family. The watch, the perfume bottle, the pair of high heels, the stone and the candle each personify a member of the family. Lamya’s analog camera, placed in between these objects, marks the artist’s presence. From finding poetry in existing curated interiors to curating her own assemblage of objects, Lamya is on a new journey.

Isthmus is an exhibition that celebrates Lamya’s poetics of space. By focusing on one object at a time, the exhibition recounts human experiences in different cities without the direct presence of the human figure. In contrast and in relation to the complexity of the 21st century, Lamya’s photographs transports us into capsules that materialize space in time – the kind of spaces that do not require time stamps as their respective design decisions, tastes, and styles blend into a common, universal feeling.