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Basmah Felemban سعودية, 1993
School as a model, 2024
Videogame
Editions of 5 + 1 AP
Further images
This game is a walk-through into a 3D model of the artist’s high school, named the 27th. Each room features a playlist of videos posted by students commemorating the end...
This game is a walk-through into a 3D model of the artist’s high school, named the 27th. Each room features a playlist of videos posted by students commemorating the end of the school year-- the only time of the year that girls are allowed to bring a camera into school, becoming the only documentation available of schools through the students’ eye.
Felemban says: “This is where I experienced the darkest moments of my life, when I realized that if I stare at a fan long enough, sounds around me blur, and if I escape long enough people stop noticing. Knowledge was pain at that time in my life, the more I knew outside school, the more my unaddressed learning difficulties became apparent.
My fear of rules and repercussions fizzled away, the outside world’s reality proved my daydreams right, and that hit hard. My dreams were starting to be reality but one that was very out of reach, so this is when I developed skills of adapting to my dissociations by turning them into obsessions about patterns, mind maps, black magic, numerology, and esoteric concepts in Islam from Sufi philosophy. Like finding spirituality in prison.
I don’t know, all I knew to focus on was the building, the spots I can hide, where people get together at different times of the day, hacks to avoid people in lines or grids, passing by teachers without being talked to, confusing a class I go to 3 times a week and having to count the doors from one of the corners of the floor, always using the same stairs, and the temperature of each classroom.”
Felemban says: “This is where I experienced the darkest moments of my life, when I realized that if I stare at a fan long enough, sounds around me blur, and if I escape long enough people stop noticing. Knowledge was pain at that time in my life, the more I knew outside school, the more my unaddressed learning difficulties became apparent.
My fear of rules and repercussions fizzled away, the outside world’s reality proved my daydreams right, and that hit hard. My dreams were starting to be reality but one that was very out of reach, so this is when I developed skills of adapting to my dissociations by turning them into obsessions about patterns, mind maps, black magic, numerology, and esoteric concepts in Islam from Sufi philosophy. Like finding spirituality in prison.
I don’t know, all I knew to focus on was the building, the spots I can hide, where people get together at different times of the day, hacks to avoid people in lines or grids, passing by teachers without being talked to, confusing a class I go to 3 times a week and having to count the doors from one of the corners of the floor, always using the same stairs, and the temperature of each classroom.”
Exhibitions
06 March — 13 June 2024 - Consecrated NetworksSolo exhibition by Basmah FelembanJeddah, KSA