Artwork Details
- Artist Sharif Waked
- Title To Be Continued
- Date 2009
- Medium Video installation
- Dimensions 42 minutes
- Credit Commissioned and produced by Sharjah Art Foundation
Overview
Videos documenting an individual’s intention to carry out a suicide operation have become a powerful visual presence in the global media. Waked’s subjects in To Be Continued begin narrating what are supposed to be their final words. Instead, what emerges are the classical tales from One Thousand and One Nights as told by Scheherazade, who saves her tribe from certain execution by narrating one gripping tale after another to King Shahrayar. Thus, through an unending process of reading and narration, the ‘living martyr’ delays that horrifying moment. Waked’s work often creates such ironic junctions between particular moments in the present and references from the past. Reflecting on power, politics and aesthetics, he crystallises the absurd realities of conflict.
Related
Waked, Sharif
Sharif Waked’s work, reflects on power, politics and the everyday, often creating junctions between particular moments in the present and cultural references from the past.