Nermine Hamman is an Egyptian photographer and artist who shuffles between London and Cairo, with an occasional visit to Houston. She is the artist behind an exhibit titled “Witeko… cowboys and indigenes,” which is on display at the Houston Center for Photography until May 4. It is definitely worth a look.
Nermine’s work comes to Houston through Fotofest’s 2014 biennial exhibit, which focuses this year on Arab artists and the work they produce. She assembled the images after watching firsthand the events of the Arab Spring unfold in her front yard and then seeing how it was portrayed online from her desktop screen. The difference between the reality of the streets and the virtual reality seen online was striking—and, at times, was an outright lie.
Nermine explains that Witeko is a native American Cree term for a social psychosis, specifically an evil spirit or person who cannibalizes or commits undescribable acts of aggression. In modern times, the term describes the wanton consumption and exhaustion of human resources and the outright aggression against other humans to obtain those resources. Many see it as society’s modern social psychosis that explains much of the evil in the world today.
Nermine used iconic images of the Old West from Frederic Remington and Charles Marion Russell and juxtaposes them with modern images of the US armed forces at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The combination is both absurd and unique. It is clearly original material.
Nermine explores these ideas in 19 images appropriated from the Old West and combined with modern warfare. “The psychosis of Wetiko spreads like a disease. It corrupts actions, opinions and beliefs, and is ultimately the cause of humanity’s inhumanity to itself. Therefore, perhaps the more pressing issue is not why Wetiko happens, but rather what we can do to dispel it. This is the essential premise of Wétiko – Cowboys and Indigenes: how to propagate a new way of seeing,” she said of her exhibit. .
The exhibit explores the ideas behind life, death, aggression, exploitation – and the depiction and manipulation of these themes in modern media. The manipulation comes from all sides and his hard to escape: government, elites, corporate media, and partisan causes. The exhibit also explores the pervasive sense and use of myth in our perception of reality.
(A quick word about appropriated images. I thought this was a euphemism for plagiarism—essentially passing someone else’s work off as your own— but have slowly come to understand that this is not the case. The unique juxtaposition of images occurs in a way that the original artists never conceived of. It is the vision of the appropriating artist, in this case Nermine.)