Borborygmus: Or Beware the 3-Fingered Mouse Without a Soul

Roger Chamieh installing Mutation 3 (Dhow with shims), 2016, Styrofoam, rope, pine & oak wood. Florida Gulf Coast University Main Gallery.

By John Loscuito

Roger Chamieh’s most recent exhibition reflects on his time living in, and traveling back to, the Persian Gulf. His installation emphasizes the importance of family and cultural identity as they “mutate” due to time and distance. For this exhibition, Chamieh created a new body of work, Mutation 1-6, a diverse group of sculptures that form a large kinetic and sound installation at Florida Gulf Coast University’s Main Gallery. Each piece brings a unique element to the space, utilizing Chamieh’s expertise in manipulating materials. They incorporate a number of materials such as Styrofoam, car parts and silicone, human hair, wood, and feathers. The artificial elements combine with the organic ones, creating forms that speak to our evolving selves.

Roger Chamieh, Mutation 2 (Dhow/Gazelle) (detail), 2016, Styrofoam, pine wood, silicone, rigid foam, variable dimensions.

The title of the exhibition, “Borborygmus: Or Beware the 3-Fingered Mouse Without a Soul” references multilayered, cultural and historical ideas. Simply defined, borborygmus is a rumbling of the stomach while the 3-fingered mouse is a reference to Mickey. Taken as a whole, the title’s meaning is far less concrete and specific. Chamieh’s caution against Mickey, combined with an uneasy stomach, encourages a deeper understanding of oneself and cultural icons. The title encourages a mental and emotional hunger for more complex narratives that facilitate contradictory perspectives. Chamieh states, “Borborygmus refers not only to the rumbling of the stomach due to hunger or uneasiness. I also see it as referring to the creative hunger that is never satisfied in me. No matter how much I “feed the beast” it always calls for more, sometimes audibly.”

The installation consists of a myriad of symbols, creating metaphors for memory, culture, resources and family. Chamieh uses imagery such as the a dhow (the traditional fishing boat of the Persian Gulf); a machine gun with a flaccid barrel being tickled by a feather; a bust of his father with western, eastern and random musical phrases playing; long black braids of hair sweeping across the floor; and a gas mask with exposed lungs. All of these images come out of Chamieh’s history and memories. They are made physical through his love of materials and the process of manipulating these materials.

Roger Chamieh, Mutation 2 (Dhow/Gazelle), 2016, Styrofoam, pine wood, silicone, rigid foam, variable dimensions.

One of the larger works, Mutation 2, consists of a life-size recreation of the back half of a dhow cradled within wooded beams as though it is dry-docked or under construction. The boat is made out of Styrofoam, a banal material that is discarded in our everyday life. Out of the cutaway section of the boat lays the limp body of a gazelle cast in silicone.  The gazelle references death of a landscape, a culture and an era of the Persian Gulf. The position of the gazelle mimics the sleeping dog in Lucian Freud’s painting David and Eli, 2003-04. Like in Freud’s painting the animal’s body drapes towards the viewer, entering our space with its luscious surface, reminding us of our own frailness.

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Roger Chamieh, Daddy’s Girl, 2012, chrome-plate, IPhone, gas mask, single looped video, plywood, variable dimensions.

Abu Dhabi, when literally translated from Arabic, means “Father of the Gazelle” and it is this city and surrounding landscape that has changed so dramatically in Chamieh’s lifetime. Both the dhow and the gazelle have been supplanted by one of the quickest growing metropolises on the planet, funded from the region’s rich deposits of oil. The transformation of the landscape and the effects on its people and their culture is what Chamieh is addressing throughout the installation. Chamieh discusses these works in terms of his memories growing up in the region and spending time with his father. Returning to visit his father through the years since his childhood, he has seen the rapid transformation of the region. With the birth of his daughter, he understands that each generation will evolve based on their environment.

Another piece in the exhibition builds on these ideas and interjects new ones. With the recent death of his father, Chamieh recognizes that he is now the only link to his daughter’s Lebanese origins. The sculpture Mutation 4 is a personal monument to Chamieh’s father that makes visible elements of who he was beyond the physical. The carved bust of his father is draped with a band of paper with a looping musical score that runs through a music box. Western pop music is sequenced in and out with traditional music from the Middle East, showcasing Chamieh’s father’s love of both.

“Borborygmus: Or Beware the 3-Fingered Mouse Without a Soul” at Florida Gulf Coast University Main Gallery, installation view.

The only older artwork in the exhibition, Daddy’s Girl, is a monument to Chamieh himself and his effort to quit smoking. A rubber gas mask houses a video of Chamieh’s daughter while a pair of exposed aluminum lungs hang below, connected to the gas mask breathing tube. The piece highlights the fragile link between people based, in this case, upon a preventable addiction. Having made Daddy’s Girl years ago, Chamieh would not have anticipated Mutation 4 and Daddy’s Girl in dialogue with each other in the context of the installation. Its inclusion, however, allows for both pieces to take on additional meanings.

Other pieces in the exhibition reveal different types of that drive Chamieh’s process. Mutation 1 is a kinetic sculpture that is a reflection on gun control. A cast silicone machine gun is displayed on the wall within a wood and glass case. The barrel of the gun slumps downward towards a hole cut out of the bottom of the case. A few feet below the case is a motor with a long feather attached that arcs upward into the hole. As the viewer walks by, they engage the motor, putting the feather in motion, tickling the tip of the gun, but no matter how long the gun is engages, it remains flaccid. The piece can be seen in the context of the debate on gun control as well as human violence in general.

Chamieh’s playfulness, combined with the use of stark materials and personal images create a poetic balance that reveals loss, hope and the inevitability of change. His work cuts through stereotypical representations of the Persian Gulf or, for that matter, the United States. The exhibition is a poignant reminder of art’s ability to humanize global concerns, offering an opportunity for communication.

“Borborygmus: Or Beware the 3-Fingered Mouse Without a Soul” at Florida Gulf Coast University Main Gallery, installation view.

Roger Chamieh was born in Beirut, Lebanon, raised in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates and educated in London, England. He earned his Master’s Degree in sculpture from Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. Chamieh has shown extensively in the United States in venues including the Factory-Art Gallery, New York, NY; the ARC Gallery, Museum of Science & Industry (MOSI) and Tampa Museum, Tampa, FL; and the Gulf Coast Museum of Art, Belleair, FL. He was awarded the 2012 “Think Small to Think Big” Grant from Hampton Arts Management and the 2013 International Emerging Artist Award - Golden 10, IEAA Online Gallery Dubai, UAE.

“Borborygmus: Or Beware the 3-Fingered Mouse Without a Soul” is on view from January 21 through February 25 at Florida Gulf Coast University Main Gallery. 10501 FGCU Blvd, South. Fort Myers, FL, 33965 / www.artgallery.fgcu.edu

John Loscuito is the Director of Florida Gulf Coast University Art Galleries. He has acted as an independent curator and artist as well as working at the Haggerty Museum of Art.