Picture Frame Screens
An art write up on the Common Well's installation from 9/25/25-10/31/25
Outline
Pt 1 Layout
Pt 2 Observance
Pt 3 Initial Thoughts
Pt 4 Thoughts Informed by Artist
Pt 5 Conclusion
Disclaimer: My humble request is to have you see the show before reading my analysis. So, if you are wondering what the show is like, I suggest reading Pt. 1 & 2 and if the descriptions captivate you, go and see it for yourself. After the viewing, write down your own conclusions and thoughts, once that is finished, then read Pt. 3, 4 & 5. I cannot stop you from reading on further after Pt. 1 & 2, but my belief is that everyone brings a unique perspective to art through our individual life experience. If you read my interpretation of the show, you rob yourself of the personalized viewing experience that your own life circumstances and knowledge would lead you to have. If however the show is not available anymore I highly recommend looking at photos of the pieces instead, then following the guideline I set above.
Luma Jasim
Rage Given Over to Mourning
Pt. 1 Layout
Layout in order of entering the door and looking to your right:
Disfiguration #6
Why We Came Here
Disfiguration #5
Rage Given Over To Mourning
Disfiguration #1
Disfiguration #2
Disfiguration #3
Closet/Mini Gallery
Blood For Oil
Luma Jasim’s Downstairs Studio (more connected to previous performance art)
Untitled #1 (the figure of blood, black, and two figures near a tree)
Untitled #2 (the people in and on the excavator)
Untitled #3 (the person holding their head in distressed)
Untitled #4 (the performance art projection of the nijab)
Pt. 2 Observance
The most obvious piece that catches one’s eye is the one at the far wall, black picture frames dangling in front of a three part canvas: one mid right, one mid left, and one protruding from the mid left canvas on the wall onto the ground in a large trapezoidal shape. Charcoal intertwining lines, faces and hands seem to reach out in agony accompanied by black squares of acrylic in varying sizes and negative white space clearly made by removed 1 inch tape strips. Its namesake, the name accompanying the collection “Rage Given Over to Grief,” depicts a two part story. The left showing bombs dropping onto a large building severed in half, the white canvas a stark background against black, white, and grey action lines, outlines, and splatters. Red, orange, and yellow representing the fires and explosions splattering the main subject. Close to the edge of the piece shows a raised hand, reaching up towards the sky. The warm colors light up the majority of the middle of the piece like a roman candle erupting from the building in rectangular shapes. The right shows the aftermath: the red, orange, yellow, white, and charcoal black, taking on more wispy smoke like shapes, with some red rectangles scattered throughout. Black lines crisscross up and down and side to side along both the ground and the sky, looking more like paint dripping rather than hard dictated lines. As one would expect of the namesake of the show, it is immense and basically floor to ceiling plus some floor space, demanding attention. There is no ambiguity in what it is depicting. Suffering so raw and apparent even without wagering a style of a photorealistic scene to connect with the audience. The faces of agony sandwiched in between the two canvases of violence are all you really need to see in order to feel what the artist is trying to bring from the wellspring of your being.
Breaking yourself from the immersive pull and submergence of unnecessary tragedy and war (though saying those two words back to back is redundant), a survey of the room allows you to step inside the space between the artist’s skull and brain fluid. Black hollow tubes or hoses are pulled in front of and across vibrantly colored pieces depicting the female form and black branching veins and arteries. Those same pieces hang atop of many curving wavy hairlike strands of charcoal and pitch black boxes along the walls. A boulder of rubble sits on the ground tethered with those same black hoses and a scarce few white ones as well.
A broom closet across the gallery and more to the left of the entrance contains an eye snatching scene. Black hoses feeds into a dark hole upon canvas resembling the top of an oil barrel. The partial facsimile of cleanly severed hands dangle from the ceiling in front of the canvas, some just hands, others still have various lengths of wrist and forearm attached, all tainted by a black dust, once again probably charcoal, and at times partly wrapped with black ribbon or string, or hose. Faux exposed bone and flesh can be seen if the hands are observed from the right angle. But the part that truly lets you absorb the scene is the ambient sound and colored projection. At first blue is pushed into the room, the canvas with slow lines of black ichor drip down. Then it turns to red, orange, yellow, with slow growing white and yellow flames moving across the canvas. All the while slow, ringing, mournful notes drag across the soundscape to accompany the sight.
Uncoupling yourself from the sight within the closet allows for more observance of the vividly colored pieces lining the walls. All of the remaining pieces in the gallery depict a headless, stomachless and most of the time limbless torso of mainly breasts, with at least one nipple covered up or just slightly turned out of view within the piece itself. Black, grey and white interplay depicting the figure vs charcoal squiggles or branching lines, signaling either cuts or capillaries. All the while our visual sense is delighted with deep gradients, patterns of vividity, and dutiful brush strokes of red, green, lavender, sky blue, pink, blood orange, yellow, tan, maroon, or ripped pages in Arabic, all of them finished with imperfect resin top coats.
Continuing down a small hallway to the left of the gallery’s door is a room at the last door frame to the left. A small corner of the artist’s mind. The first piece encountered is a long canvas showing the legs and hips of what was once a person deeply soaked in red and orange. The next figure is dripping and shiny in a black ooze that steps into sunlight next to two unichored figures sitting by a tree. Accompanying it, a similarly sized canvas has a scene rendered in black, white, grey, and yellow. Illuminated with a spotlight, it shows an excavator with many people huddled inside of the bucket and uniformed people standing and riding atop it in an inky expanse. To the back wall is a figure atop a more traditionally sized canvas is curled up in an upright fetal position, eyes widened with a crazed expression clutching its head with one hand and leg pressed up against their body. Finally, a projection is shown upon another crazed wall of outreaching arms, huddle of black figures in fear and agony and arching stripes and curves. The projection shows many, many figures cloaked in black head to ankle covering veils in various states, some running across the screen, some collapsing, some slowly walking, and some running in groups across the screen, all barefoot. Occasionally a veil is put across the camera lens as well, slowly showing the viewer what it looks like to see with the veil tinting one’s eyes.
Pt. 3 Initial Thoughts
The beginning of this gallery started for me as I came a tad too early and was met with a locked door. Luckily, the gallery curator Katherine Shaughnessy was exiting the gallery and asked me stay outside a bit longer. As soon as I got to my car I heard the characteristic light banging of a hammer through concrete. I later found out that this was Jasim doing a last minute hanging and set up of a few pieces within her downstairs studio of the gallery.
Once inside, even being one of the first few people, the gallery filled up quickly. The busy atmosphere of conversation took over as featured artist, observers, and curator mingled with one another. The thing that stood out to me most was the lack of descriptive plates next to each piece, instead a small stack of printer paper with what is usually on the cards was laying on a small bench near the entrance. I take one and begin walking around, more people flow in like a steady stream and I find myself quickly overwhelmed, so I inched further and further to the left until I find myself down a hallway, passing by doors and door frames until sound and pieces caught my eye. It is quieter with sound coming from a laptop, a piece spotlighted with a lamp and a projection on a stark background of white backdrop and charcoal figures and curves in suffering union. The lengthwise canvases, curled up figure and projection of people wrestling with a black veil push me immediately into the artist head. The larger than life canvases of the main gallery ever present in my mind as I stand in this relatively quiet and small room, feeling as if I have found an unambiguous corner. This is what I am told later is her studio, the banging I heard out in my car the last minute hanging and putting together of this room. The whole show is unadulterated but in this room, possibly because of its nature as a studio with supplies and pieces intermingling, feels particularly raw. A merging of Jasim’s performance art through projection and visual art on canvas to create a holistically unfiltered expression of being. Nothing expresses this more than the projection. Figures wrestling with the nijab as metaphor for grief. Collapsing under it at times, running with it with a multitude of others, walking backwards as if trying to process, stumbling, dragging hands along walls, and most impacting, the covering of the camera with the black veil to give us a view into what the world looks like tinted with it. The other pieces within the room are similarly affecting, with a wild and crazed look present in the curled up figure or the walking out of a living hell to a shining afterlife on the long lengthened canvas. But the piece that stuck out the most to me was the one closest to photo realism instead of abstracted, that being the figures in and on the excavator. My mind almost immediately went to Palestine, part of which was due to the fliers posted around the gallery every so often since it showed Jasim cloaked in a keffiyeh. The other being the frequent usage of excavators in ever present destruction of the Gaza Strip by the IDF for over 2 years non-stop, as well as the famous true story of Rachel Corrie, an American nonviolence activist from Washington State, that was killed directly by the IDF while she was physically opposing the demolitions of Rafah in the Gaza Strip in 2003. In this small studio, it feels like this is a cornered off room within the artist’s mind working through it’s most recent example of the life changing trauma being inflicted on countries in Southwest Asia.
Changing back over to the main gallery, it is still crowded, small pathways emerge but it can be difficult to traverse between people and piece, though since it is opening night for this show I am glad to see it busy and many taking in the art. Weaving between bodies I am able to get to the small closet and the only piece I have not observed in its totality. Its a broom closet’s worth of space which made the fullness of the piece all that more engrossing. Severed hands is always a shocking sight, real or fake. Adjusting to that as its base reality took a moment. Once that had settled I was able to observe the piece more, taking in all its details. The projection of a seemingly peaceful reality slowly dripping with black viscous lines until turning into a haze of warm colors and the imitation of fire and light, as black hoses feeding into a black hole resembling the top of an oil barrel all the while a curated soundscape assaults your ears. It is an absorbing piece. It demands attention. As do many of the pieces in this show. The lack of direct gore besides severed hands and hands with wrists and forearms is something to note. But the amputation once again brings to mind Gaza and the many amputees that have been made in the aftermath of every bombing and attack by the IDF.
For the central piece, it is hard to not understand what it it showing. It has the name of the show after all. But the moment that sticks out the most is something that happened at opening night. Where a couple, man and a woman, got behind one of the black picture frames and had someone take their picture, which solidified a thought for me. We, as in people not living in these areas of direct war and conflict, can only see scattered parts of what happens to the people there. The frames becoming metaphor for what we see through our screens. Phone videos of bombing now, and TV screens of soldiers and bombing in the past. Jasim, as someone who has actually lived through this, is giving a unique window of the feelings and emotions of what living through that is like and while the general vibe of the event was jovial, joyful, and congratulatory, it is hard to not think of the direct contrast with the subject matters contained within the pieces.
While this show was indeed about the backdrop of trauma as shown by the curves, boxes, and continuum of black charcoal on the stark white of the gallery’s walls, I would be remiss if I did not mention the many other pieces depicting the female form. The use of bright pastels specifically: lavender, blues, green, and teal in addition to white, black, grey, red, and yellow, gives the impression that these are a different section of the self, separated but about the body and not war. Their roving compositions, blocking off part of herself, the additions of ripped pages, black slashes and capillary spidering with bubbly top coated resin show a fight and an expression of self. What she defines as the self, fighting her body and her life to find some definition. The expression of imperfection and still trying to work through the ever present backdrop of trauma. Words fail these pieces. Like a lot of abstract art it is more a thing to be experienced, rather than just described. To observe it in person and figure out where it stirs something within your body. For me, it brings up the feeling of corruption from within, your body—the thing that is you and that is suppose to protect you—betraying you in some sort of way. And imperfection, where if these pieces are representations of the self, they are wandering and collage like because we as humans are mosaic and that is our beauty, each unique due to our experiences, personality, and actions.
Pt. 4 Thoughts Informed by the Artist
Finishing my wandering I was able to snag a short conversation with Luma Jasim herself and ask her a few questions. It was a lovely, but short conversation as I was not the only one vying for her attention. But in that short time she explained to me that the main reason she did not have the usual descriptor plates was that she wished for people to come to their own conclusions about the art and not to sway them one way or the other. My connections made to Gaza were not wrong per say but she is from Iraq and left at 30 to come to the US, having lived under regime and sanctions. Iraq and Gaza’s struggles are intertwined and similar. And that even if you leave it (war/traumatizing event), it still follows you. And finally, she had had breast cancer.
Pt. 5 Conclusions
Rage Given Over to Mourning is a gallery show where Luma Jasim invites us into her brain so we can have an experience of what it is like living her life. She lets us experience the observation of bombing, struggle with culture, exploitation, suffering, bodily betrayal, and true color shining through it all. Her experience in performance art lends her a unique command of gallery space, not restricting herself to the mere hanging of pieces she instead directs you through it forcing you to have less floor space through boulders, taught hoses and canvas with footprint and dares you to look beyond what the pieces are conveying to the trauma, darkness, and suffering on stark white walls. The pieces yell out at you to be observed, your gaze drawn and held onto as you try to parse what she gave to the piece and in turn is trying to convey to you. Overall, it is a stepping into a mind and asking you to get it and to also examine yourself. If she is able to confront her past and present, continuing to meet life, even while carrying the weight of its experiences, what can you choose to confront today and share with others?
-Clandestine Lotus-
If you were unable to attend this showing, there will be an encore showing of Luma Jasim’s work, The Last Supper, at the Boise Art Museum in conjunction with their Julie Green exhibition on November 5th at 5:30 PM.