Ahoo Maher: Continuously Drawing

When I came across Ahoo’s works I was drawn into them immediately. Captured moments in time, moments of life, you can feel their heartbeat, feel them breathing and the story expanding around them. They hold a lot of emotions, a certain vulnerability and softness and through that also a lot of power. Truly touching you at your core.

For the following I asked Ahoo if she wants to do an interview with me:

Luna Maluna Gri: Tell me a bit about yourself and your work.

Ahoo Maher: I’m Ahoo, I originally come from Iran and I moved to Vienna in 2008 to study Music. Austria is famous for classical music and that was the reason that I decided to come here. I started studying Cello at the beginning and I was also playing in an orchestra. As I moved to Austria it was just music, music, music and at some point I felt that something was missing, but I didn’t know what it was, so I started doing my little project. At some point a friend of mine said: “Hey, you actually do fine art! Why are you not applying for Akademie¹?”. I knew it’d come to this idea that I could also study fine art at some point because it was obvious. I did the exam and just got in and was like ‘Hä?!, how is that possible?’. That was the project, the side project, that I really had the most joy of or I could express myself easily. Music is also a really enjoyable media but I was always in the stress of presenting a wonderful piece in the best way but for me fine art was me and all my difficulties, activities, emotions and everything. And then I started studying painting, it was at that time contextual painting at the Akademie. I tried to use my music experience with the topics that I wanted to work with and I started combining different medias and experiment between different kind of possibilities that it gave me and I still do that. Nowadays I try to paint more because I think it’s the medium for me at the moment, but I don’t really focuse on any media. I just choose the media for the topic that I choose. When I have an idea to express myself then I see which media could really fit it. In general I’m working with my daily life topics. One of the main projects that I work on, since 2013 and it’s still ongoing, is the diary project. I try to document my daily life in the form of drawing or in a visual form because it was always challenging for me to use words to express myself, to say what I want to say and at some point I came to the idea to use drawing for that and since then I really have a routine to draw the situations, the experiences I have, the feelings, everything. So to document it is somehow a kind of therapy because I just let everything out on the paper and then can continue when the next day starts.

LMG: How and why did you start creating art?

AM: As I said it was just a need. Something was missing, I couldn’t express myself and was just looking for the way to express myself and then I figured out that drawing or painting or the visual is more the way of how I want to express myself. And I still think I need it because otherwise there is something stuck in my chest and I cannot breathe (laughs).

LMG: What role does creating art play for you?

AM: It’s actually a difficult question because there could be a million ways of making art just to express myself, because there’s not just one way, there’s a million ways. So for me it is about responding to the things, to the situation that is happening around me. To react to the situation through my art. Not just a reaction, but it could also be an action to the situation. To express anger, to express love, to express disagreement or agreement with the situation, etc. I try to show with my art how Ahoo, as a woman in this case and as a POC person with a migration background in Europe, what does my life look like, what do I experience and what are all my difficulties and what do I engage with.

LMG: What does your creating process look like?

AM: It’s a little different each time, but in general I keep drawing, so that’s the main theme, the main way of expressing myself. When I have a theme that I think I want to work on for a longer period of time, I start with photography. I make a lot of photographs without knowing if it will be my next project or not, I just photograph the situation. It then usually takes up to a year to process it in my head without doing anything, it’s just a lot of thinking and processing about how to do it. I actually plan a lot in advance. Then I start to do collages with the photographs I did, with drawings that I did, I put them all digitally together. Now I do my sketches digitally with an I-Pad. I try to somehow create the ideas I have and then I start to put them on the canvas with colour.

LMG: What inspires you?

AM: Everything (laughs). I’m really interested in following the news, political situations and social situations so I think these are the main topics that inspire me. Of course it could also be small daily actions that could inspire me but mainly I focus on those topics. In my mind it’s always a challenge, how could the world be like this, how could other people be so ignorant in these times, because now we live in a crazy world with a lot of wars, with a lot of crises, with climate change, etc. and we are also slowly facing it, for example today is a really crazy hot day and that’s not normal for Vienna. These issues are affecting our lives on a daily basis and I’m also thinking about these things and I’m trying to put them somehow in a visual way to create and artwork.

LMG: What is your experience with the art world?

AM: I would say I don’t have a lot of experience with the art world because my experience is still a bit smaller with the art scenes in different countries but I still think it’s too exclusive. It’s just for some people, the situation is still like there are artists and then the rest of the people. These artists are more important, they know much more than the other people, there is still a big separation between the communities. I think it’s also getting worse and worse with this separation inside the art bubble. If you belong to the people, the communities that are involved or decide in the art market you could have a chance to get where you want to be much faster or in general have a chance to be shown but otherwise it’s a big challenge for emerging artists. There are so many people who want to survive as an artist but still I think it’s not possible for everyone. What I could also express in the university was that you can live as an artist or work as an artist if your family can support you. If you also have to work part-time and also do everything by yourself, your possibilities of growing or having the chance to show yourself or improve yourself are much greater than in the other case. And the competition is so big that you cannot really catch up with some people. This is a bit unfair.

LMG: You talked about it a bit already but is there something you want to change about the art world? If yes, what and why?

AM: There was a time, let’s say 70 years ago, 50 years ago, that everyone who could afford an artwork would buy an artwork, even if the artists were not one of the “good-selling”, top selling artists. That was helping the circle for young artists to come and grow. But somehow since a couple of years ago that stopped. People are just investing through art. And if I could do it, I would say support more emerging artists and give them the chance to improve themselves or just show them.

LMG: What do you think is/are the role/-s of art and artists in our society?

AM: I think we have different kinds of artists, different kinds of art, and different kinds of roles. So we can not really say ‘this is the role of an artist’. Depends on what your interest is, which topics you are working with, which field you are in, but in general I think as a human we have a responsibility, so we have to talk about the problems we have to discuss. It could be just my difficulties, my point of view but we have to express it. I think this is automatically what artists do but it’s also important not just to be in your own cave. Come out and see what is happening in the world and also try to find similarities or a way to show, to reach a bigger audience.

LMG: What artist/-s would you like to meet (dead or alive) and if you had one question what would you ask them?

AM: I have though about it, but I don’t know which artist I would choose, I really prefer to see the artworks (laughs). Because sometimes when I read the story of an artist’s life I think ‘Oh, I really was in love with these artworks or artists and then I read about their private life and they are really crazy people, especially some of the men. I really like Lucian Freud’s paintings, but as a person? It’s just hard to say but yeah, Frida Kahlo, this is the only person where I would say I would also like to talk to but I don’t know which question I would ask her. Or I would ask David Hockney, who is still alive, ‘How could he still keep up with all the new media?’ He is like one of the only people who always renewed his techniques and his media and this is interesting to me.

LMG: Is there something you want to achieve in your art life? Like dreams? Future plans? Or projects you would like to do?

AM: There are so many dreams, always! I would love to live as an artist, as an independent artist. I would love to continue doing the projects that I like and that they are not only for presenting or for the market but also for me. What I would also really like to do is work in groups. Nowadays there are a lot of amazing artists’ collectives doing projects together and I think this is really the way we have to go. In a group we can be louder, be more creative and the exchanges can help a lot.

LMG: Do you think there is something you can bring to this world through your work as an artist which you couldn’t in any other field of work?

AM: It’s hard to answer because I could never be in another field to express myself. Music would have been a bit of that for me, but I think sometimes through colours and shapes and aesthetics you can talk to people easier and get their attention. Art, or in this case visual art, is the medium through which I hope I can at least get some people interested and tell my story and show my point of view.