Abo Baker
2021 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)
93.5 x 64.4 cm
Marwan Rechmaoui
Throughout his career, Marwan Rechmaoui has maintained a drawing practice. During the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns the artist spent his evenings recording thoughts and imagery on paper, inspired by events happening around him, music, his garden, and the news. These drawings are contemporaneous in their concerns and are indexical of a destitute time and space in the aesthetics they conjure. They invite audiences to embrace disidentification as a legible mode of relating to and dealing with the social relations and material conditions they navigate and operate within. Abo Baker is an homage to Yemeni singer, artist, and composer Abu Bakr Salem Balfaqih, whose patriotic odes to Yemen celebrate significant historical events, such as the abolition of the monarchy in the north in 1962; the independence of the south in 1967; and the unification of both the South and North Yemen in 1990. The drawing is meant to depict a derelict oud , Abu Baker’s privileged instrument, getting assailed by the onslaughts against civilian life in Yemen, at the hands of the Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels.
Marwan Rechmaoui draws on the urban and material fabric of the city to construct a sweeping and visceral historicity of Beirut’s atomized and contested narratives. His practice deploys both scholarly and embodied knowledges of architecture, language, oral history, literature, and economics to articulate some of the major questions of a ‘generation’ of artists. Rechmaoui’s work reveals, through unapologetically formalist methods, the violence of nationalism, collective identity, and social class structures. Through works such as Blue Building , Monument for the Living , If I Only Had a Chance, Spectre , The Coop , and the Pillars and Tapestries series, he demonstrates that materials such as concrete, rubber, tar, wood, and glass, when used to map a seemingly trivial neighborhood or replicate a building, can act as informed substances, archival records, or even living testaments to an epoch. The materials Rechmaoui uses form a politico-aesthetic proposition through which a multi-layered city and its native, exiled, and refugee inhabitants can identify their respective pasts, investigate a shared present, and speculate on potential futures. Rechmaoui’s oeuvre conveys the histories and complexities of our quotidian landscapes, as well as captures the sustained maneuvers of violence and legacies of collective struggle that permeate the walls and roadways of our cities and built environment.
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » KADIST
Yuji Agematsu
2015Each day, Yuji Agematsu smokes a pack of cigarettes and wanders the streets of New York City looking for trash...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Weekly Picks: Indonesia (11 - 17 March 2019) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Weekly To Do March 11, 2019 Top Picks of Indonesia art events in Jakarta and Bandung from 11-17 March 2019 The Jakarta Arts Council and Bekraf is back with its Teater Arsip program...
© » ART21
Press Release: Art21 Launches “Art21 for Everyone,” an Artist-Driven Campaign Committed to Expanding Access to Contemporary Art | Art21 Our Series Art in the Twenty-First Century Extended Play New York Close Up Artist to Artist William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible Specials Art21.live An always-on video channel featuring programming hand selected by Art21 Playlists Curated by Art21 staff, with guest contributions from artists, educators, and more Art21 Library Explore over 700 videos from Art21's television and digital series Latest Video 9:47 Add to watchlist "Now and Forever" Kerry James Marshall Extended Play December 6, 2023 Search Searching Art21… Welcome to your watchlist Look for the plus icon next to videos throughout the site to add them here...
© » KADIST
Anju Dodiya
2022The Shedding by Anju Dodiya is part of a series of mattress paintings the artist creates using fabric stretched on padded and shaped boards...
© » KADIST
Colter Jacobsen
2007Victory at Sea is a simple mechanism made from cardboard and found materials that mimics the Phenakistoscope, an early cinematic apparatus...
© » KADIST
Chris Wiley
2012Architectural details become abstracted renderings in Chris Wiley’s inkjet prints 11 and 20 (both 2012)...
© » KADIST
Zhang Kechun
2020Zhang Kechun’s photographic series The Yellow River documents the effects of modernization along the eponymous Yellow River, the second longest in Asia...
© » KADIST
Nikita Kadan
2018East of Ukraine became a place of armed conflict with Russia-backed separatists, who proclaimed parts of (the) Donetsk and Lughansk oblast (administrative region in Ukrainian) to be ‘People’s republics’...
© » THEARTNEWSPER
Dmitry Rybolovlev and Yves Bouvier settle nine-year legal feud Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Art law news Dmitry Rybolovlev and Yves Bouvier settle nine-year legal feud The Russian oligarch had accused the Swiss businessman of swindling him out of €1.1bn by overcharging him on art Vincent Noce 8 December 2023 Share Yves Bouvier (left) and Dmitry Rybolovlev (right) Bouvier: Hpetit21; Rybolovlev: Francknataf An epic legal battle, which played out in courts around the world and mesmerised the art world for almost a decade, is finally over...
© » GALERIE MAGAZINE
Auction of the Week: An Enigmatic Nude by Sanyu Sells for $24 Million - Galerie Subscribe Art + Culture Interiors Style + Design Emerging Artists Discoveries Artist Guide More Creative Minds Life Imitates Art Real estate Events Video Galerie House of Art and Design Subscribe About Press Advertising Contact Us Follow Galerie Sign up to receive our newsletter Subscribe Sanyu, Femme nue sur un tapis (Nude on Tapestry) ...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Tender reading: A review of Loss Adjustment by Linda Collins | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles January 28, 2021 By Grace Foo (650 words, 3-minute read) Not many people can endure the traumatic experience of losing a child to suicide, let alone be of sound mind to write about it in a painfully self-aware manner...
