Being Opaque: In Reality, Who am I? 

“So no, I don’t really care whether they get it or not. You know, one out of, I don’t know, how many hundreds that I meet will really somewhat get it. But in real time, man, like on the ground, in the trenches, this art stuff doesn’t matter to me.”

– Ibrahim Ahmed

While spending a year in Paris, France, a mutual friend referred me to a gallery where artist Ibrahim Ahmed was showcasing his work. The wall was scattered with old archive photos of his family collaged with a collection of performance images. Most striking were the juxtaposed images of his father and his own body. I talked to Ibrahim briefly that day, and the conversation quickly turned from gallery based artwork to exchanging our own life philosophies. I’ve been looking for an excuse to continue our conversation and pick his brain so I thought why not now.

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Dom Toliver:  So, you were born in Kuwait and then you traveled a lot. Bahrain, Egypt, U.S., then all the way back to Cairo. What’s that like? Can you give me a little bit of insight on your experience? What was it like growing up as Ibrahim? What influenced you and your work?

Ibrahim Ahmed: Yeah, of course. I actually just had to do a prompt for one of my classes at the School of Art in Chicago about Eileen Gray. It’s interesting because they talk about how her first home was pretty much the compass that guides her through her practice. You see, for years the whole trajectory is based  on this moment. The moment that the original home that she grew up in, which was simple, clean lines, et cetera, was demolished. And in its place they put this wannabe Tudor English home and she’s quoted in her journal saying, “Our family home was no longer a home.” So I thought it was this interesting structural rupture that then becomes what she seeks throughout her whole life. And replicated. 

I say this to say, because of that transient upbringing, I was always being questioned whether I was enough of a Bahraini, an authentic American, authentic Egyptian. Am I enough of this? Can I belong? What are these very finite indicators? As we say in Arabic, “like a huff huff”, not even a breath. If it hints towards this one finite thing, suddenly you don’t belong to us. You’re different. So, yes. Of course that upbringing of never really being enough of something, even though I felt I was an amalgamation of all these things, I wasn’t pure enough. This influences my practice. This becomes my whole practice. This is really the core of my questioning the nation state, its identity, and aesthetics. The visual language that surrounds these ideas, even how these things construct gender and all this, right? How deeply embedded in that are colonial projects, this is all that really informs my practice. 

Dom: Saying that puts words to a lot of things that I think about and am trying with my own practice. In a similar way, I felt like I was a part of so many cultures but never belonged to one. Or like you said, never authentic enough. Never really having an identity because you’re waiting on people to point out those indicators that you so much as huff toward.

So with that being said, I’m wondering what it’s like having your work appreciated by the capital A Art World in places like Australia and France. Do you think they’re really seeing what you’re putting out?

Ibrahim: (smiles) No.

Dom: (laughs) Isn’t that crazy? That’s crazy.

Ibrahim: Yeah it is, but you know, that’s not even who I’m talking to. That, for me, is a market. That is just income. First of all, I’m not even interested in belonging to anything at this point. I know some people are like, I’m quarter this, and that. I’m like, how do you quantify these things? Because within Egypt. There’s a thousand codified things within me alone. Thousands. It’s been the center of the world, the middle passage between Asia, Eurasia and the West. All the trade that came in from there into the continent of Africa and back out. So, I can’t even quantify what I am an amalgamation of. These nation states that we identify and quantify are no more than a few hundred years old. They didn’t exist, then to racialize the ancient Egyptians. It’s just the most absurd thing to me because racializing things is a colonial legacy. It is a colonial tool.

So I think for me to go deeper into that, you said what you’re saying about markets and markets are very different from my actual audience and who I’m actually speaking to. Who I’m speaking to, my longest project, my opus operandi, the one, the project that I will never exhibit, is the stuff I do within my community. The visual language, that’s like the tip of the iceberg of when I talk about decoloniality, or decolonization as an actual thing. But in real time. That work to me is behind closed doors. It’s not something I’m going to write about. It’s not going to be an exhibition. That to me is the real meat of my practice because as you see in Europe and the United States, we see where they are right now, the mask is off. And the art world is the center of the empire. The CIA funded the abstract expressionist. It’s deeply embedded in this stuff. 

So no, I don’t really care whether they get it or not. One out of, I don’t know, how many hundreds that I meet will somewhat get it. But in real time, man, like on the ground, in the trenches, this art stuff doesn’t matter to me.

Dom: Wow. I’m speechless, honestly. So now I gotta know: have you seen Kara Walker’s A Subtlety?

Ibrahim: It’s like the big sugar baby? Oh, no, it was sort of a mammy or something fucked up, right? And then it dilapidated over time?

Dom: Yes, exactly. So to me, it’s like to exploit the exploiter, you got to be exploitive. What do you think about representation?

Ibrahim: I mean, that’s one way of doing it. There are many ways. Have you heard of Edouard Glissant? 

Dom: I haven’t, actually. 

Ibrahim: Okay, he talks about opacity, the right to opacity. I think I might have said this to you before, but in a world of hyper visibility, to be invisible is power. Especially if we’re talking about photography, and that photography was a weaponized tool within the colonial, it is at the forefront of visualizing the other. The Africans, the Egyptians, the Arabs, the Slave, you know, we look at the world in the 19th century, 20th century. The propaganda is literally centered from the white gaze. We look at everything around that. So representation, when you handle photography, you have to contend with that history. They’re very specific choices. And maybe we had alluded to this last year, but you know, the first image on the continent of Africa is in Egypt.

Dom: I remember you saying that!

Ibrahim: Yeah. And it’s a deeply orientalist image. There’s nothing there, but the fantasies.  I believe in… opacity. Being under the radar. I don’t believe in representation. In a late capitalist, neoliberal world, representation is actually very dangerous. It gets co-opted and then used against you. Right? They say “look, we allow them to sit at the table with us. We’re actually quite democratic.” And then when the real stuff happens in Palestine, you understand what they really want. How they really look at the other, it doesn’t matter. It’s all expendable to them. So that representation to me is a very tricky thing. I understand it. 

But at the same time, my own practice, like my latest body of work, is completely about collapsing ideas of representation. Collapsing, as a means to decolonize the lens. I’m removing the whole body. Absence as a form of presence is more potent than my presence in the image. It’s a very specific thing of fantasy versus imagination. If there’s too much information, the person projects, especially if you’re talking about a North African Muslim Arab body that has a long history in photography of being eroticized and demonized. If I’m removing all that information, then there’s this idea of imagination and imagination is about engaging. I’m creating certain levels of opacity that forces the viewer to approach the image in a very different way than all the information being there and they say “oh look at his body, oh look all these things.”

Dom: I like that! Now they’re forced to ask questions.

Ibrahim: Or one hopes, right? But yeah Kara Walker’s practice is in a very specific context also and coming from a very specific generation. But yes, I think Glissant’s idea of the right to opacity is very, very interesting.

Dom: The right to opacity. It’s got me thinking.

Ibrahim: Especially if you’re handling photography, right? 

Dom: 100%. So earlier you were saying, working with the community is the real work, the real opus operandi.

Ibrahim: Yeah. 

Dom: So, would you consider yourself a socially engaged artist? 

Ibrahim: I’m really thinking about this, man. This is a really delicate question. It is. 

No, and I think there’s a very specific thing about it. One operates possibly as a form of art making? Maybe at least that what I’m understanding is it’s a part of an artistic practice? 

A curator came to my studio about a month ago, and said something really interesting. She’s like, Ibrahim, you know, there are artists who use politics. But you’re a politician who uses art. I don’t know how much that’s true but I think it’s very interesting because I would say first and foremost I am a very politically charged person who happens to enjoy creating visual vocabulary, vernacular, language, what have you. 

But what I’m doing locally within my locality, that’s different. How are we practicing decoloniality or decolonization? That’s the theory and then there’s the actual practice. I think of it as, show me what you’re worth. When nobody’s watching you. What do you do? How do you treat people? Somebody who doesn’t have your same cultural capital, you’re not in the same class structure, doesn’t use the same language, doesn’t have the same views as you, how do you interact with these people on all levels of stratas, how do you negotiate those power dynamics in real time? I’ve heard a lot of people who are like “decolonization”, and then there’s nightmare stories about how they treat art handlers during their museum installation. Just doesn’t make sense to me. So what I do in my community, it’s not about art practice. That’s why I would say it’s not about my practice as an artist. It’s about my fucking humanity. Really. I mean, it’s that simple. How human am I, regardless of accolades and cultural capital. How do I engage with the world that’s very different from mine? Egypt is a neo colonial state. It’s not an independent state. So you’re dealing with hardcore colonized minds. Hardcore, man. Like they’re deep in it. So how do you engage with that and say, come up here. You’re not inferior. What does that look like without sounding condescending or self righteous or, thinking, you know, it all.

Dom: Yeah. Yeah. That’s the struggle. 

Ibrahim: You know, I don’t think that’s art practice, right. That to me is how can I take all that information and actually apply it in real time?

Dom: So that separation is good for you? Instead of bringing art and that practice together?

Ibrahim: Yeah, because I mean, my conversations about decoloniality in these spaces are all in English. All in English, my art. Then my Arabic is actually that of a high schooler. I have to keep it real simple because that’s all I have. I only have simple tools. It’s interesting to have to decompress into the limitations of an 18 year olds vocabulary. So that’s a very humbling experience. In recovery, there’s a thing, they call it K.I.S.S., Keep It Simple, Stupid. Just keep it simple. It’s not about grandiosity or art and this canon and what am I doing by deconstructing power dynamics. No, in real life its simple. This is wrong, there’s a history here that makes us feel this way. We are not this. Why do we treat people like this? Let’s do better.

Dom: Uh huh. Okay. I like that. I never saw it like that. 

Ibrahim: Am I making sense? 

Dom: Yes, yes you are. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about making art within a community. But when you make art, you put your name on it and there’s some things in the community that you just don’t put your name on. You don’t want to own it. 

Ibrahim: Nobody knows I do anything here. Yeah, not a single fucking person knows that I do what I do. 

Dom: And that’s always how I’ve been, you know, it’s always how I’ve lived. So, you know, you do it because that’s what’s right. It’s not because you want other people to know that that’s what you’re doing, so it is very interesting. I really like that answer. 

Ibrahim: Well, yeah. I mean, even the people within my community don’t know what I do. It’s like that thing about your left hand doesn’t know what your right hand is doing. Because it’s sincere. I think the only thing that is very clear to me is that I’ve fallen into good graces with very powerful people in my neighborhood and powerful meaning, they come from a very specific family that has a reputation. Not for their money. It’s about their word, their ability to negotiate conflicts between neighbors because there’s no police that governs my area. It’s the elders that govern the area. 

Dom: Sounds amazing!

Ibrahim: Also can get ugly. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not all pretty. This particular family that I’ve become very close with, they’ve adopted me. They are the kids of one of the elders. One brother who is my chosen brother. This is my chosen family. We relate on a very spiritual level. We’re both sort of, lovers of Sufi path. Followers of Sufism, or the path, as we would call it. He never knew what racism towards the East Africans was like, he didn’t see it. I slowly started telling him, open your eyes, man, look around you. He has a restaurant on the corner, literally not even 15 meters away from me, it’s an open air restaurant, well not a restaurant that you think, it’s like a dive bar, but it’s good food. That place is an institution. And that place went from me hanging out there, to four years later, the whole East African community comes to the local bar that also belongs to his family, anything they need, any issues they have, they come to him. They call him Baba, like father. He is a protector. If this was in any other context in the West, you would say he’s a radical, anti, abolitionist slash anti racist. He’s hardcore. I see guys leaving their belongings with him. These are the things that I do talk about in which, you know, there’s these dialogues that happen, things shift here. I somehow have in this working class neighborhood, the equivalent of diplomatic status and I’m in the good graces with a certain person that has a lot of power to actually make physical changes and everybody that looks up to him. They start to have conversations with him and he’s doing, you know, God’s work. Community organically doing what it’s doing. Is that Art practice? No, that’s A practice. That’s not something you’re going to exhibit in a show, right? It’s something that’s just about humanity. How do you, actually, within your locality, effect change? I don’t believe in the system, voting. I don’t believe in any of that. Go to your locality. That’s where the work is. And actually, actually, doing something. 

Dom: That’s powerful. Seriously, thank you for that. Okay so now going back to art and getting back into your work.

When do you think you were like, this is what I want to do. I want to make things. I want it to be visual and I want it to say something like. When did you have something to say?

Ibrahim: When I wanted to be an artist, I was about 18. I didn’t know what I wanted to say through my art until 2012. Actually right about this time, October, November, 2012, something clicked. Finally, some level of consciousness came to me at like the age of 29 or 28. And I actually had something to say. I knew I wanted to be a visual maker. 18. I had something to say, 28, 29. When does that language become something very grounded and discourse and all these things? When I came to Egypt. And then you can see it in the work. I think probably 2015, 2016 shit really hit the fan. I really was in it. Because everything I was reading in books about colonialism, sort of colonial projects and this and that. And Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon, readings by Edward Said. 

Dom: And when do you know you have the right photo or the perfect title, when you said, it will always come back to you, that’s what this is called. This is what it’s going to be.

Ibrahim: I’ll tell you this. I’m from an English lit major background, right? I dropped out of college. I never got my bachelor’s degree. But I was always fascinated. That was my first love. I wanted to write.So looking at my life sometimes in third person, for example I’m sitting and talking to my father. And he says, “you know Ibrahim, no matter what I’ve done, all I’ve done, all I know is that it will always come back to you. It always comes back to the self.” And I said motherfucker!

Dom: Oh he was spitting?

Ibrahim: Yeah, hell yeah! I mean, a lot of my titles come from conversations. I’m just talking, and I’m making work, I’m just talking about the work to a friend. I don’t know what it’s gonna be called or nothing. I’m not even thinking about a title. It’s like this. My father was just chasing a dream. Like he left home because it was about this dream, but what is a dream? It’s not real. You wake up from a dream. I’m like only dreamers leave, you know, and that’s the title there. Only dreamers leave.

Dom: Wait. That’s how you got that title?

Ibrahim: That’s the title! So it’s just like that to me, it’s like those moments and something encapsulates for a title. I do know that it’s really, really important for me to allow the work to do what it needs to do. So I don’t have that, “what is it” moment. I don’t know what it is, actually. But I know that I step away from work, leave it alone for a day, a week, come back to it, stand with it for 45 minutes. Maybe I’ll work on it that day. Maybe I won’t. As I got older, I realized that you can’t force a seed to become a tree overnight. Patience is just about watering something and you water it by looking at it. It’s when the thing feels like it’s saying what I feel it needs to say. For me it’s about calmness. I try my best not to think too much. It’s about sensation. For me it’s, I feel, therefore I am. Not, I think therefore I am, or as Audre Lorde once said. “I feel, therefore, I can be free.” It’s about a different canon of existence. 

Dom: Nice. So it’s more of a feeling for you. That makes sense to me. So, I do like to ask, if you looked in the mirror and saw little you, what do you think you would think of you? Would you be proud?

Ibrahim: I never thought of that, man. I generally haven’t. Geez, you know, I think it would probably have to be a little older, like 17 year old me that started wanting to be an artist and dreamed of traveling the world, doing what I do. But I would be really blown away. When I think of it, I’m just like, holy shit, how did I pull this off? I think about the trajectory of my life, I am very, very, very, extremely lucky. Extremely blessed. Like I see it. I see the hand of the creator, moving things for me of the creative source.

But now with so much that I’ve received, how do I then offer back? So if I was young, I saw him in that mirror, wow, a moment of a lot of gratitude, but also searching. There’s a very important question. How do I offer back? So that would be my two part answer. Beautiful stuff but more work to do. 

Dom: You’re doing the work. I think little you would be in awe. That leads me to my last question. What’s next? Not only in the art world, not only what you’re working on now, but what’s next in life, in your community?

Ibrahim: Teaching. 100% I’ve been doing art in galleries and different tiers of galleries and exhibitions for almost 20 something years. I’m over it. I am. I am really over the market. I let my gallery do what they want to do. I’m very, very grateful. I do have a solo show coming up in Australia in March. I got to go to that. But, I’m hands off with it at this point. 

I’m interested in what I’m doing in my studio, pushing my practice, questioning things, new material, different processes. There’s one project that I’m taking images of rugs, collaging those images, and then going back to the factory to then reproduce them. That’s a whole project about histories and contamination of cultures and borderlessness, something I’m very interested in. 

But mainly teaching. I can’t wait. I do private lessons now for artists. I go and mentor younger artists in Egypt and Cairo and the greater region. For me, it’s really important to start countering a lot of these, very specific canons in the global North. All the people that are doing contemporary work. The only place they can get educated is predominantly in the Global North. You have Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana, which is pretty damn good. There’s definitely some institutions on the continent and in the global South, but they tend to be, Western based. I think Ghana has created their own canon. In Egypt, we don’t have that. Everybody has to leave and go over to the West. That’s a problematic dynamic. I’m getting this thing just to validate and actually create a pedagogy that is really thinking about locality. The West, the U. S. is about locality that’s framed as universalism, but it’s not. So I’m interested in using that as a way to teach and say, wait a minute, let’s look around us. So teaching for me is fucking important. That’s really what I want to lean into. Art is always going to be there. It’s something I’m always playing around with. 

Dom: Amazing! Seriously, thank you for your words. Everything that you got going on, I see my own work and my own self in it.  So this has really helped me. Hearing your philosophy, your practice. You’ve mentored me in this little hour that we’ve talked. Thank you!

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Ibrahim Ahmed Born in Kuwait in 1984 , and spent his childhood between Bahrain and Egypt before moving to the US at the age of thirteen. In 2014, he relocated to Cairo, where he currently lives and works in the informal neighborhood of Ard El Lewa. Ahmed’s manipulations of material, especially textile, are informed by research into the histories and movements of peoples and objects. His works in mixed media, sculpture, and installation engage with subjects related to colonial legacies, structures of power, cultural interactions, and fluid identity, generating discussion around ideas of the self and notions of authenticity within the parameters of the nation-state. His work is held in many private collections and was recently acquired by the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Australia, the Kamal Lazaar Foundation, Tunis and the Kadist Collection, France. Ahmed is currently completing an MFAat the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Dom Toliver (he/him) He is a photographer and performer from Long Beach, CA with an BA in Sociology/Criminology and an MA in Film. His works explores identity, emotion, and the overlooked stories of everyday life. Using a variety of mediums, he aims to capture raw, candid moments that reflect the complexities of the human experience. His work often focuses on marginalized individuals and themes like masculinity, grief, and the common threads that bind us all.