Untitled 1-4 (From Blimps To Bugs), 2011Pencil & Xylene Transfer on Paper, 6 x 8 in. each

Nada Raza -

EYE OF GOD

I am the eye in the sky Looking at you I can read your mind Song lyrics – Eye in the Sky (1982) Alan Parsons Project

!e notion of the ‘birds eye view’ may seem removed and distant. However, it is anything but neu-tral; In a sequence of collages titled Fear Brings About (2010), Hajra Waheed reminds us that the technologies that allow aerial surveillance and access to them, are deeply embedded into the dominant system of power. Waheed’s ongoing investigations into the insidious re-lationship between control, visibility and the nature of surveillance technology in the form of architectural plans and blueprints are a precursor to her more recent work on drones. !e man-made means to look down from above and survey the world, dramatically changed the way the world was viewed. !e phrase ‘Eye of God’ was used to refer to the US Air Force by an American reporter during the Vietnam war, reporting from a military helicopter that o"ered her a ringside seat.1 According to literary critic David Spurr, the origins of the journalistic convention of writing from a privi-

leged position or the ‘commanding view’ lays within the traditions of colonial writing in English about new dominions, where the authors gaze surveyed the land-scape to be controlled …concerned with the over- powering and potentially destructive power of the gaze. But as any visual artist knows, the gaze is also the active instrument of construction, order and arrange-ment. What one might call the ideology of the gaze takes on one of its clearest forms in the convention of the commanding view. One knows the importance of the commanding view – the panoramic vista – to architec-ture, landscape painting, and sites of tourism, as well as to scienti#c research. Military intelligence and police surveillance: it o"ers aesthetic pleasure on one hand, in-formation and authority on the other. 2

Fear Brings About alludes to the means by which the commanding view became possible, the imperative in wording of the title a hint that the images contain clues, a trajectory for the viewer to follow. Waheed favors found or often scavenged paper as a choice material, and in this instance the artworks are composed from frag-ments extracted from vintage periodicals on a background of #nely ruled scienti#c or mathematical graph paper.

!e #rst image is of the control console in an aircraft cockpit, closely cropped, its dark and light patterns echoed by a geometric pattern photo-transferred below. !e next image is a negative crop, so while the sky is visible as a block of sharp color-corrected sky blue, the missing forms remain unidenti#able until further inspection: what seems to be the inverted tear-drop shapes of hot-air balloons. !e third and central image in the sequence repeats the blue on white #eld with a similar cropped image of a single balloon, the fragment of a geometric border, and the trace of a text, perhaps a prayer in Arabic. !e last two works in the series are of another $ying object, images of cone-shaped craft from early NASA expeditions – Projects Mercury and Gemini – the #rst manned $ights into outer space. Combined, all the images reminisce of schoolroom science projects, the impression reinforced by Waheed’s minimal intervention, a torn edge from a spiral bound ruled notebook.

!e discrete sequence reveals a subtle and thoughtful investigation; by connecting seemingly innocuous images of $ying objects, Waheed creates a narrative progression that reveals more sinister implications. Cloaked within commonplace visual and print material are references that may seem ubiquitous, familiar or even nostalgic, but when brought toge-ther in this sequence, the connections between them become evident; they trace the technological development from $ight to surveillance, control and domination. While these technologies and others were often funded and developed by a military-industrial complex focused on national interest and self-defense during the arms race of the Cold War, they were represented as friendly, passive and for the bene#t of all mankind. From the innocent pleasure of a hot-air balloon on a sunny day to commercial air travel, the celebrated arrival of man in space – and here Waheed has added on the margin, the elaborate maneuver of a military aircraft. !e black form of the plane itself has been dismantled, but its orbit is connected back to the cen-tral shape of the spacecraft, the whole arrangement formally laid onto an Islamicate geometric pattern. Waheed’s insertions are restrained, the awk-ward layering deliberate and thoughtful, forcing the eye to consider the formal appearance of each new element.

1 Mary McCarthy, quoted in Spurr, David !e Rhetoric of Empire 1993 Duke University Press, London p. 15

2 ibid p.15

Fear Brings About, Untitled 1/5, 2010Collage, Pencil, Ink & Paint on Drafting Paper, 17 x 22 in. each

A conversation with Waheed pinpointed the source of the images she had gleaned: National Geographic was a household name for many middle class English-speaking readers outside the Euro-American sphere. !e magazine was known for its international distribu-tion. Its photo-based format presented the explorer as a gatherer of knowledge, claiming #rst-hand access to heavily exoticized parts of the world. With a focus on natural science and conservation, the magazine was per-ceived as a source of accurate and independent infor-mation. Begun in 1899, the magazine of the National Geographic Society of Washington pursued a vigorously populist editorial policy whose commercial success coin-cided with the expansion of American interests abroad.3

National Geographic or Life magazines were the print campaign that informed the attitudes of a genera-tion, not just in the US but also in the expatriate en-claves of Saudi oil-#elds where Waheed was raised. Now debunked as part of the public relations e"ort around the Cold War, they were available in USIS libraries and at specially discounted rates of subscription for the

‘third’ world, a phrase now perhaps as unfashionable as these dated publications. !e suggestion was that the ‘progress’ made by scientists in the modern West were apparently for the bene#t of all mankind. !e ideological messages consistently rea%rmed in popular culture were disseminated through burgeoning American media, and a generation absorbed them through pop music, educa-tional materials, media and print culture.

Waheed mines this material for clues, culling images, layering and transforming them, to create an aperture in the space between the visible and palatable side of the neo-liberal regime and the less visible but powerful system of knowledge production that supports it. Fear Brings About is a critique of these ideologies of univer-sal progress, modern living and scienti#c neutrality that were part of the capitalist agenda in the 20th century. Within the context of her larger practice, this cryptic and discrete set of works provide an insight into her on-going critical investigations of surveillance technologies and an awareness of the omnipresent, omnipotent ‘eye in the sky.’

!e Eye of God

3 ibid p.51

Fear Brings About, Untitled 3/5, 2010Collage, Pencil, Ink & Paint on Drafting Paper, 17 x 22 in. each

Fear Brings About, Untitled 2/5, 2010Collage, Pencil, Ink & Paint on Drafting Paper, 17 x 22 in. each

Fear Brings About, Untitled 5/5, 2010Collage, Pencil, Ink & Paint on Drafting Paper, 17 x 22 in. each

Fear Brings About, Untitled 4/5, 2010Collage, Pencil, Ink & Paint on Drafting Paper, 17 x 22 in. each

Installation View : Hajra Waheed, "eld notes and other backstories presented at the Art Gallery of Windsor, Canada, 2013.

Photo Credit : Frank Piccolo

Installation View : Hajra Waheed, "eld notes and other backstoriespresented at the Art Gallery of Windsor, Canada, 2013.

Photo Credit : Frank Piccolo