Longer exhibition titles pique my curiosity more than the poised or monumental ones. The title of Rana Hamadeh’s exhibition at the Western Front, Can You Make A Pet of Him Like A Bird or Put Him on a Leash For Your Girls?, seemed cheeky at first. Curious about its conception, I discovered it’s an excerpt from the Old Testament that describes the Leviathan. So it turns out the title, as well as the exhibition, is not in fact cheeky, but far more monumental than I first surmised. 
Rana Hamadeh, A River in a Sea in a River (detail), 2014, script and scenography for a play (photo: Tom Callermin)
Exhaustive and comprehensive research is imbedded in the Lebanese artist’s exhibition, which is conceptualized as a theater set, and the employment of inventive display strategies is integral to her work. Arresting relationships proposed between a USSR military-issued pocket wire saw placed by a copy of Hygiene for Beginners from 1947 are presented in the vicinity of antique phlebotomy cupping glasses and a set of tin toy soldiers. The phonetic similarities between “medical” and “military” seem eerie and ironic in the presence of these groupings. Despite didactic diagrams and detailed descriptions of origins, this treatment of obscure objects and ephemera doesn’t always make their importance obvious. In fact, obviousness is totally scarce, but straight-up information is not part of the exhibition's intent.
A central sculpture is a textile draped over a low zigzagged platform quoting the beheading passage from Alice in Wonderland. A massive tapestry spot lit by a projection is an image repository of other objects and silhouettes in the room, such as a page from the artist’s sound-play script (an eight-channel horn speaker affair inspired by the Shi’ite ceremony “Ashura”), which is available as a take away. If it should all resonate as a bit theatrical and a blitz of content and form, it may be because the exhibition and performance are both part of Hamadeh’s process for an opera-in-development.
The focus of her research is never singular or explicit, though the myriad of content ranges from set design to Syrian and Lebanese histories of power. In an exhibition that almost guarantees a trip to Wikipedia later, its depth is in the notion that you don’t necessarily need to become a scholar of the exhibition’s purview. There is no shortage of entry points to pave your own inquiry, and it’s fair if you get a little lost.
Note: This exhibition is presented in conjunction with the artist’s Can You Pull an Actor with a Fishhook or Tie Down His Tongue with a Rope? coming to Gallery TPW in Toronto in June.
Western Front: http://front.bc.ca/
Rana Hamadeh: Can You Make A Pet of Him Like A Bird or Put Him on a Leash For Your Girls? continues until August 2.
Steffanie Ling's essays, criticism, and art writing have been published alongside exhibitions, in print, and online in Canada and the United States. She is the editor of Bartleby Review, an occasional pamphlet of criticism and writing in Vancouver, and a curator at CSA Space. She is Akimblog’s Vancouver correspondent and can be followed on Twitter and Instagram @steffbao.
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Rana Hamadeh at Western Front, Vancouver
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