Ten Questions with Mixed-Media Artist Rana Huwais

Rana Huwais is a multi-disciplinary artist with a focus on printmaking and soft sculpture. She was born in southern Michigan and continues to reside there while pursuing her education at Albion College. She is on track to complete her BFA with concentrations in printmaking, painting, and ceramics in the upcoming spring. Huwais's creative endeavors revolve around the exploration of cultural and personal memories, the blend of tranquility and wistfulness found in nostalgia, and a sincere embrace of innocent optimism in both art and life.

Her current artistic endeavors delve into themes of intimacy and tactile experiences, particularly focusing on the significance of hands. She creates large-scale soft sculptural installations, delves into platonic love, and examines how cultural communities and memories endure through the lens of Arab concert traditions. Huwais draws inspiration from the enchantment found in everyday life and the moments that touch the heart.

She has recently been awarded a FURSCA research grant to further develop her installation work during the summer. Additionally, she serves as a Teaching Assistant in the Printmaking department at Albion College and holds a role as a Curatorial Assistant/Collections Management Assistant at the Albion College Dickinson Gallery. In this capacity, she has curated several exhibitions, including one that explores anonymous art practice and the cult of the author in Medieval and Early Renaissance prints, as well as a Human Rights exhibition currently on display in the Dickinson Gallery at Albion College.

ARTIST STATEMENT

In her artistry, Rana delves into the realms of nostalgia, childhood, memory, and the intricate experience of being a second-generation immigrant hailing from a nation currently grappling with the turmoil of war. In terms of artistic expression, she employs vivid hues, expressive and childlike brushwork, cultural symbols like the evil eye and Arabic script (often incorporating personal diary-like passages), soft materials such as fabrics and embroidery, and charmingly "cute" imagery. Through these creative choices, she conjures a sense of solace, nurturing, and a return to the intuitive innocence of childhood. Simultaneously, she juxtaposes the visual vibrancy with the gravity of her subject matter—such as an accelerated childhood, diaspora, strained familial dynamics, and cultural narratives—hinting that her work perceives the world's darkness through the lens of a child, one we are conditioned to outgrow hastily.

By exploring nostalgia as a fleeting and potentially harmful concept, intensified by the history and trauma endured by her family and their homeland of Syria, she aims to convey this sweetness tinged with melancholy and bitterness. Ultimately, her art carries a message of hope, encouraging us to embrace goodness and light when needed.

Her creative endeavors unfold on a stage adorned with vibrant, spiritual, cultural, and tenderly melancholic elements. She also delves into the notions of memory, home, space, and an upbringing shaped by a rich multicultural environment. In her recent works, she investigates various forms of love in life, spanning from familial or maternal affection, exemplified by her soft sculpture book titled "يا ماما (Ya Mama)," to platonic love, particularly the feminine variety. She explores the concepts of touch and intimacy, specifically their impact on our overall well-being, through her evolving sculptures of hands, aptly titled "The Votive Means You're Cured."

Moreover, she is intrigued by the contrasts and implications of employing fabric and soft materials in her creations, as evidenced in works like "The Father and The Mother," her forthcoming FURSCA installation project, and multimedia ventures such as "يا ماما." Additionally, she seeks to unravel the influence of the Arab tarab concert style experience, renowned for its hypnotic and emotionally charged effects on its audience. In particular, through this exploration, she aspires to investigate how communities can draw strength from traditions that predate their hardships and utilize them as a source of healing in the midst of the diaspora.

INTERVIEW

Interviewer: First of all, introduce yourself to our readers. How did you start getting involved with art? And when did you realize you wanted to be an artist?

Rana Huwais: My name is Rana Huwais, and I'm a Syrian-American mixed media artist who's always been especially interested in kind things. I have always been creative, but I didn't often have the confidence to say so when I was younger. My creativity truly manifested in my writing ability, which I never doubted; there was a point where 'writer' was at the top of my very long imaginary list of dream jobs. This, of course, turned out to be very useful for my work now. My road to becoming a visual artist was one of the many unexpected results of Covid-19. The chaotic pandemic-era class signup protocol led me to enroll in one of the only open classes I was interested in, an introductory drawing class. Learning to draw was something I was deeply intimidated by but dreamed of doing. A few weeks in, our professor took us all to visit his studio, where he made it plain to us that being an artist wasn't some lofty, unattainable goal; artisthood was something challenging but infinitely rewarding and, most important to me, fun. I've been stuck since.

Interviewer: You are a mixed media artist, working primarily with sculpture and printmaking. What are, in your opinion, the common traits between these two mediums? And what are the differences?

Rana Huwais: I think that sculpture and printmaking are the two mediums that allow for the most experimentation and therefore are the most fun. They are the ones, to my mind, that truly allow for all conceptual possibilities. Me making a collection of prints is obviously printmaking, but if I were to collect them in a pile, then they would become a book—a sculpture. There's something about books as the convergence of the two that I find really fascinating. To me, both sculpture and printmaking are incredibly tactile, intense, and detail-oriented. The artist has to be inches away from work at all times, and by doing so, they're able to breathe themselves into the piece; the same way that some people (me) talk to their plants to supposedly help them grow, I believe that the same conversations should be had with our works. On the other hand, the differences between the two really lie in the way that I use them.

Interviewer: How does your practice change based on the medium you are using? Do you use different mediums to express different concepts or ideas?

Rana Huwais: Lovingly, I find printmaking very neurotic. At the same time, I find sculpture quite menacing and imposing and painting as more free and expressive. Each medium to me has a different personality, and since I mix them all so often and freely, it often feels like I have a little toolbox where each of these little personalities resides and gets jumbled. But, I have come to notice that I go by tactile feeling as a means of imparting feeling or concept to my work. Sculpting with clay, as I mentioned, has an intimidating air about it because it's literally a hard and cold material. Clay also has an ancient feeling to it, only making them more imposing. This works well if I want to create a formidable air to a piece. However, sculpting and printmaking can be soft if I use fabrics, or even thin paper, or found objects that make it seem whimsical. So the same medium is able to be transported just by the feeling of what I'm using. I have never found printmaking to not be tense, though. It's the consistent eldest child. I really love setting types for poems that are intense since it only makes it more high-strung. From there, because nothing can stay intense with me for too long, I like to diffuse it by adding whimsical doodles or bright colors. I bounce from medium to medium as steps in a process—we start with the intensity of print, diffuse it with soft sculpture and the freedom of expressionistic painting, sew some buttons on it, add some doodles of stars, and call it a day when it looks like you could cuddle with it. Really, I'm hiding the big scary stuff under layers and layers of lovely soft stuff that you have to dig through. Isn't that what it's like to get to know a person?

Interviewer: You are of Arabic descent, and your culture is well-represented in your work. What are the main traits you apply to your work? And how does it influence your practice?

Rana Huwais: Living in an area where my family was the only Arab family, something began to happen, and my family sort of became my culture. My family's cultural singularity bolstered our closeness; we four were the unit. Being far from the communities of the homeland, per se, led me to transfer my cultural idea onto that unit that gave that culture to me: the gateway to my lineage. When I think of my culture, I think of my parents and the lives they led, their family before them, and my brother's and my place in it as the viewers also tasked with carrying it all forward. So really, any work I make about my family, whether that be our relationships, the things they have taught me, or the stories they tell me, is inherently cultural.

Formally in my work, I occasionally use motifs like the evil eye and jasmine plants as some of the many small easter eggs I leave behind. This is a tactic I use very often, where the symbols I use have loaded meaning to me but are often very simple, and I leave the viewer to decipher it. The most common method I do is by writing in Arabic, almost as a code. In my entire school career, including undergrad now, I hadn't met another student who could read it, and it felt like a way I could be vulnerable by my own means. Only I could tell them what it meant in my own time. It's very much a product of my environment, almost self-centered; I had begun to think of myself as alone on an island with an indecipherable language, blabbering to myself. But really, there are countless others who can understand it. I sometimes laugh because the Arabic I do write is often very broken, and sometimes I struggle to read back what I've written. I out-code myself. I think it's the sentiment and practice of writing something that matters to me. It feels all the more personal to do it in the language of my grandmother and of the dubbed Turkish television shows she loves so much.

I like to play around with the idea of Arabic as a mystical poetic language, where each script is a spell and evokes the might of the heavens. On the surface level, based on orientalist ideas of the West, my writings would seem that way. But in reality, I've written about how little sleep I got last night, how I hate the color I painted my nails, how quickly I descend into overthinking and want to trade my brain out for a new one, how much I love peaches and how my dad prefers Aleppo style zaatar because he's patriotic, so patriotic he eats it with a spoon (a practice he passed onto me)—all with what I believe is the handwriting of a child.

These ideas of mysticism and harrowing dramatic tales of intergenerational suffering, all the things the West has come to expect of an Arab child of immigrants, I despise. I live in the constant weariness of being tokenized or pigeonholed into this type of work. I'm so weary of this, in fact, that I often use my heritage as a background element to inform my concepts, keeping it out of the spotlight so it won't get snatched. It's in those small easter eggs; it's in the stories that lead to pieces; it's in my titles. I want my work to be about me, a person with a heritage, and not me as the representative of a heritage. I'd be a terrible representative anyway; I don't even like cardamom.

Interviewer: What other themes do you pursue with your work?

Rana Huwais: First and foremost, I'm forever fascinated by nostalgia and longing. The sentimentality towards the passage of time that I take to my work has always existed in me, but I think that there's something very haunting about the idea that humans will always mourn for something as inevitable as the past. I also love the fact that nostalgia exists alongside memories, sometimes one clouding or inventing the other. There's a sinister quality to this that I also love to explore. But above all, I love the tenderness of our memories and how endearing it is that people will always long for times when they are happy. But how do we do this without becoming stuck in that past? We all exist in our own little bubbles of our experiences, which in turn become our worlds.

I also love exploring affection in all its forms and the tenderness it brings. The ways that affection differs between friends, family members, or partners are also fascinating. I especially explore familial affection since that is the form that I think truly sees the realities of our personhood; they're there from the beginning all the way to the end—especially mine. I also am beginning to realize a common philosophical thread of a sort of optimistic existentialism, the kind that realizes the meaninglessness of the universe but uses that as a means of endless possibility over doom. This leaves it all open for us to decide, which is so exciting. I like the thematic combination of this idea with the appreciation for the romanticization of the mundane, something that we are beginning to see appreciated more often in the media, especially since the pandemic. Endless possibility meets your favorite cup of tea: worlds are made.

Interviewer: You have a very recognizable style, mixing childish images and crafting techniques. How did you come up with this style?

Rana Huwais: It happened organically as I came up with my concepts. I'm very concept-first since this helps me lay the groundwork for the ideas I want to communicate; to me, this is the most important part. The formal elements really serve as the support to the final structure. My style really began with my Baby Talk triptych. It was the perfect combination of the more intense subject matter buoyed by the bright illustrations and Arabic text. It's the trifecta that I've used as a basis for almost all my pieces since. I'm very happy that my work has a jovial visual quality to it since I'm always looking for my work to be a comforting force. The more serious bits end up being little treats for me to hoard alone and give out crumbs if I so choose to explain the pieces.

Interviewer: In your work, you often deal with the idea of memory and nostalgia. How much of your personal experience can we read in your work?

Rana Huwais: Oh, one thousand percent. It wouldn't be mine if it wasn't my experience at the core. As I mentioned, I define myself as an intensely sentimental person, and I think it would be impossible for me not to make art about that.

Interviewer: You are still very young but already active both as an artist and a curator for Albion College Dickinson Gallery. What do you think of the art community and market?

Rana Huwais: As the cliche goes, I think the world would be a very boring place without artists. We are such an empathetic, funny, invigorating, infuriating bunch of people, and I'm proud I am one. The art market, on the other hand, terrifies me. Especially while still in school, artists exist in a bubble of inspiration and development and activity and interest, only to leave and be left to deal with the reality of a stifling capitalist grip on our market. There seems to be a huge dissonance between what an artist's price should be and a price that is affordable and accessible to a wider market. The former differs greatly from the latter based on work time, material, and expertise, which are essential to any position's calculation of a fair wage. Making a liveable wage while charging high but fair-to-me prices seem incredibly difficult. So what does one do? To charge a lower price means to not profit and 'cheat' yourself; to charge a high price means to know your worth but not sell. For me now, at the beginning of my career, it seems like a trap. Fair pricing, but for who? Selling work in a gallery means doing work that is monetarily inaccessible to all by the design of the setting. That is, if you can get that representation in the first place by meeting the right person at the right second through your impeccable networking ability, which is also your family connection, but you'd never admit that. Or if you have the money and time to do endless application after application. The cutthroat world of gallery representation leaves many artists with the thought of selling independently, making themselves a small business brand—exhausting. Our current social media landscape dictates that to have a successful brand is to exist every second for the viewer, every moment monetizable—suffocating and unrealistic. But regardless of all this, there is a part of me that is too in love with those in the bubble, those who have the inspiration and the humor to be optimistic about it all. I hope I can be like them for as long as I can, and I'm stubborn, so it'll be a while.

Interviewer: As a young artist, at the beginning of your practice, what would you like to see more of in the art world?

Rana Huwais: I would love for there to be a government subsidization of the arts, at least in America. I think the return of a WPA-style artistic prioritization is long overdue. You get good art if you take care of your artists. I would also envision more accessibility to artistic connections. I would love for creating a community to be easy. I wish we relied less on networking, but that's just because I'm so bad at it. I wish AI art wasn't so readily available, we don't understand enough about it yet, and that scares me. I wish that all artists participated in wage transparency; it'll only make us more knowledgeable of our worth and assertive enough to reach it. I wish that the repatriation of artifacts was an utmost priority. I wish the decorative and the craft and the hobbyist were taken more seriously. I wish that critiques would happen well past school; we all need them. I wish there were huge book clubs to discuss theory since I am a nerd who loves reading theory. Lastly, I wish that more joyous and bright art will be put into the world, and I hope we have fun doing the work we do. May we all be paid justly and sleep well at night. Amen.

Interviewer: And lastly, what are your projects for the future? What are you working on and hoping to accomplish this year?

Rana Huwais: As follows are my chaotic plans. Currently, I am working on my grant work for the Foundation for Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity at Albion College. It's a huge honor, and I'm having an incredible time. My piece consists of soft sculpture and carpet tufting, for which I have gone frighteningly over budget. Following that begins my grind for my final year in undergrad. I have to finish some sculptures from last year by knitting them some sweaters, sculpting more hands for my army, hopefully, taking part in another ceramics sale, and recording the sound for a video piece using stitched ceramic plates I made a few weeks ago. All the while, I'm going to keep writing in the hopes that some of it will be used for pieces. But most daunting is my thesis piece, which will be a risograph comic collection of short stories exploring the intersection of existentialism and the romanticization of the mundane. I'm thrilled I get to make another comic since it's a medium that perfectly embodies both comedy and sentiment, and the former is something that I find myself arriving at often but don't imbue into many of my pieces. I'll also hopefully get to use connections I made at my workshop last summer at Penland School of Craft to complete it. It all feels so full circle. This ambitious list also will only take me to the end of next spring. Beyond that, it's a mystery. The options are open, and the world is vast, but that's how I like it.