Gold leather sculptural figure. A reinterpretation of the reclining odalisque —
isolation and fragility in the digital age. Anima Gallery, Doha, 2023.
The Odalisque belongs to a long history of the reclining figure in Western art — from Ingres to Manet to Modigliani, the odalisque has always been a study in the tension between exposure and interiority, between the gaze and the self. This reinterpretation enters that conversation through the material language of the present.
The piece is constructed from gold metallic real leather over varied-density polyurethane foam filling — a material combination that gives the figure both lustre and weight, a surface that reads as opulent from a distance and as vulnerable up close. The body language is deliberately turned inward. This is not a figure inviting the gaze. It is a figure that has withdrawn from it.
The work was made in response to Eruption, Anima Gallery's group exhibition exploring the blurred line between reality and illusion, and the forces of change and upheaval that define the current moment. In that context, the Odalisque becomes a portrait of a specific kind of contemporary solitude — the isolation that coexists, invisibly, with total connectivity. The body present but unreachable. The self legible only to itself.
Shown alongside work by Jean Boghossian, Nadim Karam, Said Baalbaki and Zheng Lu, among seventeen artists from across the world.
Eruption — Anima Gallery, Sikkat Al Wadi, Msheireb Downtown, Doha, Qatar. 10 May – 10 June 2023.
