As a relatively young and new artist, my art foci and motivations are still developing. As of now, my art tends to focus on the mundane and ordinary aspects and people of life that would not otherwise be acknowledged. I am someone who is interested in other people’s passions and joys, simply because there is excitement present, even though it might not be recognizable to just anybody. I prefer to use video to document things that I see in my life, my city, and my space. More specifically, I often prefer to document people and events in my family and personal life. My life has an interesting combination of the old and the new emerging into a new culture. My family immigrated to the US from Egypt in 1986 and so I am interested in the dynamics of immigrant life, immersion, and assimilation.
As an emerging artist and growing videographer, I would like my work to grow alongside my other interests of political and humanitarian issues, and be able to document and represent those ideas into an expressive, visual art form. These issues are definitely less mundane and ordinary, but fulfill my personal need to be a proactive member of society, as opposed to just a viewer. I would like to use documentary video as an art form to show people how others live and encounter problems. This could go for international issues, as well as very local issues.
My main interest lies in documentary video and I think that documentary art is a very accessible form of art. A goal of mine is to help people think, develop thoughts about other people and places, and I think documentary film is a good place to start because it is so approachable.
Amira Soliman
11.20.06