Mixed Media Installation: Formless

  • Yasmeen Ayyashi

An installation exploring the form or formlessness of identity.

The installation aimed to create a conversation about the definition of identity, away from any generically imposed terms that are usually used as tools to talk about it. What I wanted to do was to set up the installation in a progression of translucent panels, and have the space allow the viewers to interact with the three elements, character/context/environment, simultaneously and separately, while having their position influence their visual of the piece as a whole at any still moment. I wanted the space to challenge the questions about identity that are usually brought about in any discussion around the topic, such as what terms are encompassed within that one word, what influences identity, and what happens when one of those elements is taken away. 

The development of the work came about when I realised that what I am doing is attempting to discuss formlessness through a form that is never constant, to tackle issues of meaning/identity/cognition in a way that creates a tension between form and formlessness, to produce a physical entity that would not hinder either. This generated an installation that opened up a perceptive discussion (of viewer within the space) about the process of the production vs. the product. The process of creation of the work was experimental, with the final visual never being pre-defined, but dictated by the overarching narrative. The installation was a recording of this process, and in this process the only tangible element was the intention to change the state, induce a loss of form, and forcefully capture a form to talk about.

The process ended up having no beginning and no end. It began and ended with a hybrid of form and formlessness at the same time, and of the three visual markers that I had produced to enable me to visualize this process. Their form, therefore, became almost dispensable, physically, without losing its intrinsic meaning.
The aim was for the viewers to witness within the space a battle that the physical entity is undergoing between the two induced states, form and formlessness. The work defined formlessness as a state that exists as the lack of a state, and not as nothingness. It is the constant loss of a state. Formlessness had to come in two places: the first being the loss of form (the absence of a constant form), and the second being the process of the production of the form, which was visualized as the space (void) between the phases that the entities moved through throughout the space (Hybrid, Prelude, Birth, Development, Awakening, Conversation, Transcendence, Hybrid.) 

The work posed a series of questions that attempted to redefine the terms 'identity', 'form', and 'formlessness'.

Formless was funded by the Young Arab Theatre Fund (www.yatfund.org), among other local sponsors, and exhibited in Amman, Jordan and Beirut, Lebanon.

The installation was featured in a campaign featuring emerging artists, that was designed for AIZONE, a fashion retailer.