A little while ago, one of our artists' did a henna design that ended up being pretty controversial in our little henna world.
The post featured the artist's thought process for the design. Instead of being welcomed, it was treated with disrespect, but not for the reasons you may think.
This design was attacked by another artist (a very popular one), as she claimed the style of flower as her own, and the design being a copy. The thing is though, that this design was a complete original, and a simple flow to another similar flow design applied earlier during the week. This artist, claimed the rose as a copy, and demanded it be removed. But, we stood strong and honest.
Designs in the henna world tend to be between a blur of similarity, and a line of distinction. But this rose you see here... well, it was more on the blur end. This rose is similar to many, ay florals in Arabic or Khaleeji style of henna. This type of rose pops up in various artist's work. Again, I say this type of rose--it's bold, colored in, and very rose like. Check out some of the other artists with the hashtag #arabicrose, or #arabicstylerose and you will see what I mean.
Nonetheless, this rose got scrutinized, and this popular artist got her friends to message us to harass, than continued by blocking our account.
Here are the thoughts on this: It turned out that this rose was a similar rose from another artist. I tried reaching out to explain that this rose was a design rendition of my own but it got a little messy. How many times have you seen similar designs of different artists but no credit? Motifs and designs have existed in art history for centuries. That is why we see certain textile and embroidery patterns from different parts of the world, but are able to guess where it originated from. My little debacle with this artist (and her entourage), has really made me rethink my henna process. So while I could just say yes INSTAGRAM PERSON, here you go, this was inspired by you, and thus very easily end the controversy over this image, I'm going to stand very firm on my artistic talent and still be confident that this was a rendition of a rose design of my own. And if you don't believe me you can go through my stories to see how much I practice roses in order to master this technique. It has become very clear to me that I need to hone in on my henna style and now, also show my proof of inspiration. Art doesnt exist in a vacuum. Art cannot be owned.
