ZEINAB SAAB IN CONVERSATION WITH THE CURATOR

What inspired you to make this body of work?

There wasn’t really anything that inspired this body of work other than having free time on my hands during the pandemic and being forced to sit with myself. I think it came organically with all of the transitions that were taking place in my life, and quite frankly, I got bored with the work I was making prior to this current body of work. I needed something different. I think that the notion of the grid has always been present in my work, and this current work is just a transformation of that.

How did your childhood experiences shape the nostalgia present in your work?

I find that this work is a longing for what I wanted as a child but never got. I am not talking about material things, but rather the ways in which I’ve wanted to express myself but couldn’t. In many ways, I find that this work represents a playful and joyful component that wasn’t really present in my life as a kid.

How do you see the language of the grid evolving in your future work?

I am not sure how this work will evolve, and I am glad that is the case. This body of work feels like it came out of nowhere, and it was refreshing because it was unplanned from the start. I am hoping that the way it evolves continues to be birthed out of the unknown. Planning for future work can kill so much of the joy of making. Putting pressure on myself to think ahead of a body of work will only make me dread it. I am trying to enjoy the work and not let the anxiety of the future taint the joy that is present before me.

The process of naming the works comes after the piece is made. The titles are inspired heavily by popular culture references—anxiety and sadness wrapped in humor. I have always been one to deflect feelings with humor. For a while, I felt that this was something to work on or to be shameful of, but now I am finding humor to be a sigh of relief in the heavier moments in life. The titles play a role in characterizing what I am feeling in the moment of making. I do not think too much about them shaping viewers’ interpretation of the work. I label them for me, and I have no particular idea in mind about how the viewer should look at the work, nor would I ever want that.

Does your work address identity and representation as an Arab American artist? If so, how?

I honestly don’t think about my identity in my work. I made my peace with that in previous work, and I am glad I did because it was necessary at the time to explore and release those stories. But in doing that, I felt like I lost myself. I got so caught up in identity that I neglected the other complex components of my existence. This body of work made me realize that.

I have a lot of processing to do and memories to unravel. For me, having an explicit focus on either embracing or challenging notions of what it means to be an Arab American artist doesn’t allow me space for exploration of deeper emotions caused from being Arab American. And by that, I mean that in my past work, the pressure to represent my culture didn’t allow me to address the messy realities I’ve faced at the expense of this identity. Arab American culture was not kind to me. I felt conflicted growing up here and there, and there is a lot of pain that I experienced due to how Arab culture absorbed Western patriarchy. Gender and class dynamics within Arab American culture made me question my “Arabness,” regardless of my family background or even my name. I had to let go of the desire to “break stereotypes” because I have a lot of hurt to process based on what I was told defines my identity as an Arab. I say this because we don’t acknowledge enough the complexity of our relationships with our cultural identity, and I am tired of attempting to romanticize something that at many times doesn’t make me feel like I belong. To anyone who grew up as first generation in an immigrant family, this is not new. We have pushed those raw feelings to the side, and it ends up hurting us in the long run.

Zeinab Saab (b. Dearborn, Michigan) is based in Portland, Oregon. Their current work focuses on exploration of the inner child through color theory and the grid. They received their BFA in Printmaking from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, OH in 2015, and completed their MFA in Printmaking at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL in 2019. Their work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in San Francisco, St. Louis, Detroit, New York, California, Dubai, New Mexico, and Hawaii among other places, and is held in several permanent collections, including Emory University, The Bainbridge Museum of Art, Zayed University in Dubai, UAE, the Arab American National Museum, and the University of Iowa’s Special Collections Library.