For his project Book of Veles artist Jonas Bendiksen travelled to the small city of Veles in North Macedonia, inspired by a series of press reports starting in 2016, that revealed Veles as a major source of the fake news stories flooding Facebook and other social media sites celebrating Donald Trump and denigrating Hillary Clinton. Scores of young people in the impoverished city had discovered that they could make a decent living by fabricating and circulating stories online. Originally presented as a book, Bendiksen’s haunting images show the city of Veles and its inhabitants. A man leans out of a window of a large apartment block, a pair of satellite dishes hanging nearby. A woman sits on an unmade bed, gazing into the screen of a laptop. Grainy and dimly lit, the images are eerie, poignant, and beautiful. They’re also fake. Bendiksen’s project also references an historical tale, the original Book of Veles , involving a story about a pre-Christian pagan bear-god (called Veles) from a manuscript discovered in 1919. While this religious-historical epic is popular today among Russian nationalists, professional academics have concluded it is actually a forgery—a piece of fake news from the 1920s Bendiksen did make two trips to Veles in 2019 and 2020, but he didn’t photograph any people. He shot pictures of buildings, land and cityscapes, and when he returned home to Norway he used video-game-production software to transform the images into three-dimensional renderings. Using a game engine, he built 3D models of people and objects and placed them inside the scenes, carefully adjusting their poses, clothing, and lighting to make everything look as realistic as possible. When the book of the final images was originally published, the project was celebrated as photojournalism, and it wasn’t until Bendiksen made a public announcement that it became clear that it was a fake story about real people, who made fake news. After the reveal, the project was covered in almost 100 articles in the worldwide press.
Jonas Bendiksen is a Norwegian-American artist and photographer whose work addresses enclaves, people on the fringes of society, and those living in isolated communities. His first published book, titled Satellites – Photographs from the Fringes of the former Soviet Union (2006), looked at separatist republics in the former USSR. In 2005 Bendiksen started a project titled The Places We Live about a different type of enclave – the urban slum. This project became a three-year journey through four slum communities around the world. In 2008 it became a book and exhibition featuring projections and voice recordings in a three-dimensional installation. Bendiksen’s work also considers faith and religion, and its place in society. His book, The Last Testament (2017), is about people who claim to be the Second Coming of Christ.
Diana Al-Hadid’s Monumental, Spiky Bronzes Examine Feminine Strength and Fragility | Artsy Skip to Main Content Advertisement Art Diana Al-Hadid’s Monumental, Spiky Bronzes Examine Feminine Strength and Fragility Rawaa Talass Nov 16, 2023 5:13PM Diana Al-Hadid The Bride in the Large Glass , 2023 Kasmin Price on request Portrait of Diana Al-Hadid by Diego Flores...
Podcast: Singapore Theatre Festival 2018 | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints August 2, 2018 Duration: 48 min Matt Lyon and Naeem Kapadia are back on ArtsEquator’s theatre podcast, and with a bang: nearly an hour’s worth of discussion on the Singapore Theatre Festival 2018 which just ended on 22 July...
La Galerie Dior Unveils Spellbinding Exhibition Spotlighting Women Artists - 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 La Galerie Dior in Paris has opened a new show spotlighting women artists...
Women Art Revolution Alicia Smith, Amapola Prada, Claudia Joskowicz, Clarisse Hahn, Fang Lu, Laura Huertas Millán, Lynn Hershman Leeson, siren eun young jung Women Art Revolution draws a selection of works from the KADIST collection that aim to initiate conversations around women’s issues, feminism, and feminist art...
State (in) Concepts Opening reception on Friday, October 20, 2017 from 6 to 9pm with Margarita Bofiliou, Laure Prouvost & Jonas Staal, Alexandros Tzannis and screenings with Zbynek Baladrán, Filipa César, Keren Cytter, Cao Fei, Basim Magdy cur: iLiana Fokianaki Starting from the question ‘what could a European artistic program be?’, KADIST invites iLiana Fokianaki, Founder and Director of State of Concept, a non-profit institution located in Athens, to present a retrospective of her program that began in 2013...
New Bedford Whaling Museum Restores Rare Panorama Painting Skip to content Conservation efforts to restore Charles Sidney Raleigh’s “Panorama of a Whaling Voyage” (1878–80) This December, the New Bedford Whaling Museum revealed the groundbreaking restoration of one panel from Charles Sidney Raleigh’s “Panorama of a Whaling Voyage” (1878–80)...
Monuments of the Disclosed by Ahmet Ögüt is an NFT series of digital monuments to whistleblowers...
Our Grandmothers’ Gardens by Olga Grotova is based on the history of Soviet allotment gardens, which were small plots of land distributed amongst the families of factory workers to compensate for poor food supply in a country that was over-producing weapons...
Streaming: the best films about artists | Movies | The Guardian Skip to main content Skip to navigation Skip to navigation From left: Kirk Douglas as Vincent van Gogh in Vincente Minnelli's ‘unabashedly gorgeous' Lust For Life (1956); ‘raw, restless' Jeffrey Wright in Julian Schnabel's Basquiat (1996); the Swedish artist and mystic Hilma af Klint in Halina Ryschka's documentary Beyond the Visible (2019)...