Soad make cutouts from the printed profile portrait photographs she captures of her diverse community of colleagues, family, friends, teachers, as well as recent acquaintances. Soad chooses and arranges the cutouts into a temporary relationship of parts to depict an individual inner world. She then photographs her constructions with shadows and spaces enjoying the imperfections of the printed hand-cut edges, then prints the composition onto a wood panel to incorporate the wood grain in the final artwork. An interplay of both analog and digital techniques speak to openness and fluidity to finding what feels right when looking into the layered and textured topography of our Inner Worlds.
When hung together the portraits reveal the interconnectedness of our shared humanity through abstractions of repeating, shapes and textures reflecting qualities of inner life as a call to know and connect with ourselves and each other more deeply, beyond our outer profiles.
“Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you to. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be.” ~Shonda Rhimes
“Learn to trust your inner teacher, the burst of relaxation and freedom that rings through your whole body.” ~Martha Beck
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. ~Anaïs Nin
© Soad Kader
