Sara Naim’s works are close-up images that reveal the bigger picture

The Syrian artist talks about her images displayed at the exhibition When Heartstrings Collapse, which are based on corrupted files of dead skin cells.

Sara Naim’s When Heartstrings Collapse exhibition at The Third Line gallery in Dubai. Courtesy Sara Naim / The Third Line

It began with the idea of space as a shared concept, as Syrian-born artist Sara Naim pondered micro images and their relation to boundaries.

It occurred to her that touch is the first contact that we have with the world – and so used a scanning electron microscope to create black and white images of her fingertip – which appear almost like a landscape. Peer closer and you notice a visual “hiccup” – the perfect sits alongside the imperfect. This is a digital glitch, an error that Naim is keen on highlighting.

There are also coloured images of Naim’s hand and again, a glitch has occurred, and she has documented it.

Every image in When Heartstrings Collapse – Naim's first solo exhibition, which is at The Third Line gallery until April 16 – is based on corrupted files of dead skin cells.

It is essentially an exploration of chance and an abstract account of the human body. We talked to the artist to find out more.

What led you to look so deeply for these works?

It was the concept that space is shared and merged. I wanted to show that everything is together, that there’s no separation. So I decided to photograph that level. It’s so micro and yet the images look like landscapes.

What was it about the concept of space that appealed to you?

I read something that described different degrees of scale and how we, as humans, live in the medium-sized world – so we can see lines, shapes, forms and boundaries. But on a small scale, the boundaries aren’t seen – the atoms spread out and the shapes merge. I’ve always been interested in science and started to explore a visualisation of these ideas in a less scientific reasoning but by using a scientific apparatus.

What did you see through this apparatus?

You can scan one tiny sample for hours and could be there for five hours just staring. I realised that the most interesting thing was my own fingertip – it’s how we connect to the world – and was the easiest point of access.

This artworks on show also reflects errors.

There was a glitch in the photographs taken with the scanning electron microscope. This happens if you do it too quickly as it doesn’t load properly and so there is a disturbance. The glitch is important in this concept – it’s information that is there but something that’s not readable. It’s corrupting the images.

Each work in the show is named after an emotion or feeling. So you applied a name based on the work?

I looked at them and wanted them to identify the emotion. A weird, crazy glitch looked to me like a tremble and that’s why I called it that. But it isn’t just about emotions – that’s just one aspect. It’s about understanding information from non-information. It’s finding yourself between knowing and not knowing, looking at something so micro but realising it is macro. It is the state that we are in – this medium-sized world, but we’re actually composed of the micro. This is also about scale.

Speaking of scale, on what did you base the artworks’ sizes?

With the prints, some stand at 167 x 131 cm – the average height of the human body and the width was by default. I've always worked with measurements based on the human body. One of the works, Blush, is broken up into five pieces, one of which is a mirror that warps your body. Here, I'm trying to have a corruption within the corruption. I wanted another distortion to occur.

• Sara Naim’s When Heartstrings Collapse is at The Third Line until April 16. Visit www.thethirdline.com for more information