Ayman Yossri – I Want To Get Married

Ayman Yossri, born a Palestinian in 1966, has always lived in Saudi Arabia, and the only place he can call home is Jeddah. After his marriage with a Saudi woman he deeply loved broke up, his personal life went into a crisis. He retired from Jeddah’s art world, in which he had become a major player (read about the city’s art life here) and spent several years in his parents’ modest home, mulling over his life, his art, love and the world.

It was in this period that he abandoned painting and started experimenting with other media to express himself. He started decorating Kleenex boxes with old movie posters (his Maharram series), and he started taking photographs of his TV screen – watching TV had become interesting since the Saudi authorities had allowed satellite TV and internet into the country. He focused on capturing those moments when the Arabic subtitles interplayed significantly with the image: sometimes suggesting new, unintended meanings, at other times resonating deeply with his intimate feelings. This series, which is ongoing, came to be called ‘Subtitles’.

Since then Ayman has turned to many new and different media, experimenting thoroughly, creating a richly layered oeuvre. But where the work of many of his contemporaries focuses very much on Saudi society, and how it is changing (or not, or should…) Ayman’s focus has remained squarely on his personal life. And for a reason.

Ayman is a romantic, deeply in love with Saudi women; yes, specifically Saudi women. But he is a Palestinian (with a Jordanian passport), and according to Saudi law, the children issued of such a wedlock would be Palestinian/Jordanian. And that is unacceptable to almost all Saudi families, making a marriage very problematic. And without marriage, no deep cross-gender relation is possible in this country. This is also why his first marriage broke up.

In his most brazen project to date, Ayman printed a T-shirt with the words “I want to get married” and walked around Jeddah, going specifically to places where young men and women meet. Although the project did not result in a wedding, he engaged many people on the streets, sensitizing them to the plight men with the ‘wrong’ nationality like him face, and the artist was happy with the result. Some of the more private encounters that occurred as a result of this public performance were not photographed to preserve the privacy of the people (men and women) he spoke to.

In Fight History, the ‘I want to marry’ project is printed as a booklet that people can read privately, surrounded by a selection of works from the subtitle series referring to love; it serves as an antidote to the conflict evident in the rest of the exhibition. It serves as a reminder that precisely there where much of the violence seems to be directed at, or coming from – the Wahhabi Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – romantic love may still be the supreme driving force of men.

An online catalogue written by this curator, of a previous series of work by Ayman Yossri, can be found online here.