Jihad Dennis’ Mural from the Spring
Jihad in front of Sun Showing Teeth
Jihad Dennis spent three months as our artist in residence at feverdream from May 2024- August 2024. And as is tradition, he had his time here celebrated with an amazing 40 ft mural displayed at The Shoreway Building since about April. Jihad’s mural, titled “Sun Showing Teeth” was sourced using historic open source images from the Library of Congress. As we see on the mural there are many forms of iconography, and for Jihad is something he has always been interested in. Using the threshold technique through Photoshop allows Jihad to transform these images and create a new context that is more gritty, or jumbled. This lets his process ask the question as to how these formal conventions relate to and connect with iconic (in the actual sense of the word) open source images.
As we see it there are 4 categories presented in this mural. There are objects, people, text, and a personal motif: the sun. The objects are from museum archives of non-western sculpture. The figures are of photos from disparate places like the 1920s Dominican Republic, Southeast Asia, perhaps an old passport photo, but look as though they are recognizable or familiar. The hidden context around the iconic Southeast Asian reference of a woman with a mask at the bottom of the composition shows the idea of tradition or practice. This connects to his overarching theme of how these different cultures are combined. Furthermore, through the threshold technique given the idea of timeless “hieroglyphics”, portrays these images as ancient, relic-like, similar to cave paintings though instead of inside the shelter of a cave this time they are embedded on the wall of a historic building-turned-apartment complex in Northeast Ohio..
Jihad employs the use of text in a way that is not necessarily readable. Similarly found within old, faded textbooks or seen in Basquiat’s work (where crossing words out draws more attention to it), Jihad thinks it is more meaningful to obscure text, especially when you have remnants of what was once there. He uses text as a texture. Other artists have done this such as David Lynch in his use of dialogue as texture, drowned out because it was not necessarily meant to be heard and understood.
Sun Showing Teeth detail shot.
Through his artistic practice, Jihad would scan photos and throw them into Photoshop to see what he could make–or perhaps what he could destroy. Jihad mentioned that on this mural it may be more scrambled in relation to what is his taste, but as a designer he loves a body of text that adds credibility and organization because of its formal elements. In this case the prose arranged in a very poetic-like use of the field of the page is what adds credibility to the work via unreadable text. Jihad, being a designer, explained how freeing it can be to make something be more about the texture in a visual context–using graphic design as a tool for creating art without any advertising agenda.
“It is very visually appealing to me when typography is in a very small and orderly fashion, especially when it is a long rectangular body of text that is well placed and structured.”
The signature element of Jihad’s mural is the sun. Created originally by a friend of his, with some added rays it has become a reappearing motif of his across other mediums that he works in. The sun is something that has been, is, and will always be universal across all cultures. It is a unifying aspect of human culture regardless of location, as devotions to the sun appear in the art of every peoples. Touching on the intricacies of language again, Jihad plays with the double meaning of the two homophonic versions of “sun” and “son” when spoken. He plays with the dichotomy of pain and pleasure: the sun isn’t smiling, it is simply showing teeth. And sometimes the difference between those two facial expressions is very minimal and heavily relies on context. It connects strongly to the aesthetics of Jihad’s mural. The sun will be here way after humanity is gone in the same way that cave paintings and hieroglyphics exist long after those moments of humanity are gone.