Sorry I Missed Your Call, I Was Busy Regressing

By artist Zeinab Saab

Exhibition now open through December 10th

Reception Date: November 3rd, 2022 5 PM-8 PM at the L+W Gallery in SMSU 250

Artist Bio

Originally from Dearborn, Michigan, Zeinab Saab is currently based in Portland, Oregon. Their current work focuses on exploration of the inner child through color theory and the grid. They received her 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. 

Artist Statement

Sorry I Missed Your Call, I Was Busy Regressing is a body of work that explores the grid to create maps to the inner child that was lost over time. Color becomes linguistic elements that symbolize the echoes of that young self which I hear from afar, but can’t quite reach.

This body of work began as simple experimentations of color theory and design. The work began to organically manifest into a language that I forgot existed within me. These paintings behave as maps to different portals to lost aspects of the young self. These portals aid me in the search for the child’s laughter that became muffled, the voice with the uncontrollable volume that toned down, and the chaotic yet playful behavior that was modified for the sake of “civility” over time. 

Bright, neon colors create the lost language of the inner child. Each painting behaves as a reclamation of certain characteristics that were forced to be disposed of simply to appease an already failed construct that is gender and patriarchy under the guise of “tradition” and “culture”. The choice of color is  purposefully loud, often difficult to sit with for a certain period of time. That is the inner child screaming, reminding me to always disrupt and cause discomfort, especially in a world that was formulated to never give me or anyone like me ease in the first place.

Sorry I Missed Your Call, I Was Busy Regressing is a disruption from reality. Everyday I am confronted with the monotony of life and how it is inherently constructed to ensure that there is no time to listen to that inner child calling. This body of work acts as a reminder to disrupt reality, to either create or jump into a portal that transports you to aspects of yourself that are ignored, Even if the visit  is just for a moment. We often forget that an imagination is a dangerous tool. It is deliberate to forget such a thing. To be playful is to disrupt a world that only sees you as a body created only to produce, and gives us permission to dream of another world where your inner child can finally be healed. 

If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then we give up the core- the fountain- of our power, our womanness; we give up the future of our worlds.

-  Audre Lorde, Poetry is not a Luxury