100 Years of Squatting

Print Room Collective, Kuwait, 2017

100 years ago, a French-American painter and concptual artist Marcel Duchamp shaped one of the most influential artworks of the 20th century. By creating the term “readymade”, Duchamp was able to allocate mass produced everyday objects and take them out of their natural context. In doing that he altered our perception of what can be considered an object of art by modifying the way we perceived it from a physical form to an intellectual understanding. In “The Fountain” Duchamp took a mass produced object, which in his case was a urinal, and placed it so that its functional significance had vanished under this new thought for what the object really is.

The region has been drastically influenced by Western home appliances over the past century, more specifically the toilet. The French toilet was regarded as a symbol of status and development, reigning over the floor sunken Arabic toilet. In this work, the artist pays homage to Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ and the Arabic toilet. This readymade has been luxuriously readapted to promote and commodify the out-dated object. It is an attempt to reclaim its role using our cultures lavish use of marble.