The Site of Possible Being: How Egyptian Stylist and Artist Biba Esaad is Using the Cyborg to Transcend Embodied Oppressions
Biba Esaad styled and directed by herself, photographed by Emily Battaglini.
Words by Najma Eno
If you’re acquainted with the alternative fashion scene in Toronto you’ve likely heard the name Biba Esaad. Her draping handwoven textiles, distinctively fantastical adornments, and affinity for colourful excess have come to quietly define Toronto’s fashion counterculture. Yet, the Egyptian artist’s visual brilliance transcends the world of sartorial tastes. The artist, whose mediums include paint, sculpture, printmaking, performance, textile, and of course styling, is careful to root her practice in an exploration of an imagined, queer future whereby embodied oppressions can be transcended. Specifically she does this through her continued use of the cyborg. “The cyborg body,” she says, “is the body of an imagined existence-a site of possible being, and subsequently, a site that allows for the process of becoming.” Esaad uses the cyborg to reject the forces of oppression that define her present in favour of a utopic future where the body is no longer subjected to the tyranny of white supremacy or misogyny.
Often referencing the work of the Bay Area Figurative Movement, Esaad’s paintings showcase her fascination with the human figure. Loose brush work and bold use of colour abandon a desire to precisely represent the figure favouring instead to transcend the limitations of the physical form. Limbs contort, extend, and unravel into the vibrant patchworks of colour from which they emerge. Unconstrained by the limitations of our material reality, the cyborgs of Esaad’s paintings are formed through what she describes as, “an insistence on potentiality.”
In her only painted self-portrait, a genderless, raceless, figure stands a towering 9 feet tall. “I like that it doesn’t necessarily bear a resemblance to me,” she says, “because of all the work that I’ve done to take it away from myself so that it can stand for something greater than myself.” That something greater than herself is the artist’s imagined future where racialised bodies are no longer sites of restriction. Her paintings then come to represent the artist’s relentless commitment to imagining a freer world into existence.
‘The Thought is Distracting’, Oil Paint & Mixed Media on Textured Fine Art, Paper, 9.5 x 13”, 2020
Esaad’s affection for the human figure combined with her resolve to use the cyborg as a means of transcending embodied oppressions is present too in her styling. “When it comes to styling,” she says, “I try to work with only POC models, if I’m doing casting that will be the cast.” She often employs the use of colourful props and her hand-woven textiles in what becomes a kind of hybridisation of the model’s body. Oversized red boots become extensions of one model’s legs, a multicolour knit garment is wrapped around another’s waist where the lower half of her body has been entirely removed. In another scene a model stands with one foot in a white box while the other steps forward creating a stark contrast between the size of his two legs. In this way the figures of her styling mirror those of her paintings. They similarly contort, expand, and unravel transcending the limitations of their material experiences.
For Esaad the cyborg body is a body which is in a state of constant variability. “Coded as a kind of disassembled and reassembled post-modern being,” she says, “the cyborg comes to represent a denial of one’s constructed otherness, ultimately in favour of the body in flux.” Brilliantly, Esaad is able to achieve this state of physical mutability both in her painting and in her styling. “I look at these bodies that I’m styling as sculptures in their own right,” she says, “it feels nice to adorn them with art objects.” Vibrant, rebellious, surreal, her styling offers us more than mere aesthetic proclivities. Like all great artworks, her body of styling is as striking for its conceptual undertones as for its aesthetic ingenuity.
Geist styled by Biba Esaad for L’Oeuvre, with photography by Luna Khods and Hair and Makeup by Steph George.
Though her work employs the use of the cyborg to imagine a utopic future, Esaad credits much influence on her work to looking to the past. Namely to the rich history of her home country Egypt. “Many of the remaining ancient Egyptian artefacts are hybrid humans themselves,” she says, “lots of pharaohs were depicted with the head of a lion, the beak of a bird, and so on.” According to Esaad, “there are a lot of parallels that can be drawn between pharaonic bodies and the idea of the cyborg body.” Through her varied mediums Esaad skilfully illustrates those parallels. Her Egyptian background influences her work in other ways too. She’ll often hide Egyptian symbols in her paintings or quietly insert Egyptian objects into photoshoots. She says, “I use objects not only as things but as a way to engage with the energy and power manifested within them.” Most recently Esaad has been connecting to her heritage through paper making as a way to “explore papyrus and traditional forms of paper making akin to ancient Egypt.”
Ultimately, through the cyborg, multi-talented artist Biba Esaad offers up a body of work which successfully critiques the systems of oppression in which we find ourselves while simultaneously manufacturing a utopic future free of them. By returning always to the body, the figure, the site at which racialised people navigate oppression she roots her work firmly in reality while simultaneously offering up better, imagined futures. “The cyborg is the site of possible being,” she says, “it exists in excess of the real but it is also embedded in the real.” Charming, vivid, often bizarre, visually her work is undeniably alluring. Yet what gives it weight is her insistence upon challenging traditional representations of racialised people. Esaad masterfully invites us to recognise in the racialised body a site of resistance, immense beauty, and above all else transcendence.
For more by Najma and Biba:
Najma: @najma.eno
Biba: @rightmood + @cyborgcamp + cyborgcamp.ca