Bahraini artist Khaled Almoayed has used a special art project to help the needy, giving the community food for thought this Ramadan.

Unlike most artists who use food as their subject matter for still life pieces, Khaled used different types of cuisine to give life to his art work by pouring it all over his models.

The 24-year-old, from Riffa, who works in advertising, created an interactive art installation entitled The White Box, which then lead to his Ramadan campaign.

He unveiled his work during an art exhibition at the Anamil Gallery in Budaiya in June. According to Khaled, the gallery’s founder, Rama Al Husseini, helped inspire the project.

He said: “Over the years I’ve done personal projects capturing different materials in motion. Some things worked and some didn’t. I used to carry an ‘idea book’ with me and in 2009 I sketched this random over-the-top idea.

“I drew 10 booths with portraits of people inside them and each had a big red button which, when pushed, would continuously drop items on them. I totally forgot about it because I didn’t think it was feasible at the time.

“However, this year, Rama had a conversation with me that pushed me to finally participate in an exhibition, something I’ve always wanted to do. That’s when I found the book and my light bulb started flickering.

“I believe that the process of creating art is one of the most important experiences that an audience usually misses out on. Using photography and stop-motion animation film, I created a fun and wildly colourful interactive installation which I also managed to tie to a worthy cause.”

Visitors would enter a room in the gallery, which had a huge mysteriously sealed white box blasting classical music. Inside the box was a TV and an iPad preloaded with an app that Khaled’s friend Janos Filip created.

The screen featured still pictures of 11 models and once a chosen face was touched, a quick stop-motion film would appear showing food falling on them.

After this, visitors walked to another room, which was adorned with canvases, priced at BD255, of Khaled’s favourite moments from the shoot, along with an explanation of what each individual went through.

Khaled said: “I wanted to entertain people with explosive colours, comedy and shock value by making people laugh, disgusted or stunned. Watching people enter this strange musical box in a confused state and then leave it happy and excited made all the hard work worthwhile. Some even wanted to go again!

“Food captivates me and this allowed me to bring food to life in an unconventional and whimsical scenario.”

Khaled always wanted to do something charitable but thought it would be even better to do it through something he was passionate about. When the idea of using food came to mind, there were obvious ethical considerations that he took into account.

“Firstly, it was integral to the project that most of the food were left-overs, expired and going to waste anyway. I tried to stress that as much as possible at the gallery,” he said.

“As a group, we decided on the categories or cuisines. We had American food, seafood, English breakfast, Italian, Mexican, Chinese, fruits, Bahraini, Indian and desserts. We listed everything we could think of for each category and then narrowed it down to around five or six items.

“We wanted to be sure that we weren’t too wasteful and that each model had a limit to what could be thrown at them. The result was an absolutely beautiful mess!”

On the other side of the room a donation box was set up for visitors to make contributions towards feeding needy families during Ramadan.

“If I was going to waste food for art, then I wanted to make up for it ten-fold. The team and I donated early on and on top of that, donations were collected from gallery-visitors through the donation box,” he added.

Khaled, his team managed to raise more than BD1,300 that supported more than 100 families through the Al Reem Charity. The charity champions organised food packages and delivered them to needy families during Ramadan.

Khaled said: “I expected some people to be against my project but this did not bother me because if I managed to help out needy families then I can go to sleep happy and proud knowing that I made their lives a little bit easier.

“I thought it was the right time to do this because I’m at an age where I want to make something of my life and do things that matter. Many of us lead privileged lives and don’t think about what others around us are going through. I love my country and if I could do anything at all to help my fellow Bahrainis, I will do it.

“Also, I’d like to thank the entire team that worked on the project as well as the Anamil Gallery, the Al Reem Charity and Canvas BH. This was a team effort and without these amazing people this project would not exist! I sincerely thank each one of them for believing in my crazy idea.”

As a thank you to the models, at the end of his art photo-shoot, Khaled put himself in the line of fire allowing the models to throw the remaining food at him. A portrait of his food massacre went up in the gallery as well and was titled Revenge.

The young entrepreneur is currently taking some time off from art to focus on his latest business venture.
 
He is currently in the process of creating his own website but for now his work can be seen on www.behance.net/khaledalmoayed or by emailing him on khalidalmoayyed@gmail.com