The threshold in contemporary Pakistan between the security of private life and the increasingly violent and unpredictable public sphere is represented in Abidi’s 2009 series Karachi . These staged photographs were shot against the backdrop of the city’s empty streets at sundown during the holy month of Ramadan. During this time, Muslims fast and retreat indoors, leaving the city eerily empty. By portraying ordinary citizens from religious minorities, the photographs reclaim the occupation of public space. Domestic gestures are brought forward and presented in the streets. By being so specific about the times and locations where they were shot, Abidi tests the political potentials of these everyday gestures. In Karachi Series I (Ken DeSouza, 7:42pm, 25th August 2008, Ramadan, Karachi) (2009), a man in a white shirt polishes his shoes without further revealing anything else about his identity. Presented in lightboxes, the pictures’ backlit luminosity exaggerates their absurdity and strangeness.
Bani Abidi’s practice deals heavily with political and cultural relations between India and Pakistan; she has a personal interest in this, as she lives and works in both New Delhi and Karachi. The artist’s subject matter ranges from border tensions to immigration conflicts, cultural diversity, and the relationship between private and public space. She works in the media of video, photography, and drawing.
Invited in 2007 to the Museum Folkwang in Essen (Germany), Simon Starling questioned its history: known for its collections and particularly for its early engagement in favor of modern art (including the acquisition and exhibition of works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse), then destroyed during the Second World War, the museum was pillaged for its masterpieces of ‘degenerate art’ by the nazis...
Taking archaeology as her departure point to examine the trajectories of replicated and displaced objects, “Who will measure the space, who will tell me the time?” was produced in Oaxaca for her exhibition of the same title at the Contemporary Museum of Oaxaca (MACO) in 2015...
Drawn from the widely circulated images of protests around the world in support of women rights and racial equality, the phrase I can’t believe we are still protesting is both the title of Wong Wai Yin’s photographic series and a reference to similar messages seen on protest signages...
Do ut des (2009) is part of an ongoing series of books that Castillo Deball has altered with perforations, starting from the front page and working inward, forming symmetrical patterns when each spread is opened...
The threshold in contemporary Pakistan between the security of private life and the increasingly violent and unpredictable public sphere is represented in Abidi’s 2009 series Karachi ...
Invited in 2007 to the Museum Folkwang in Essen (Germany), Simon Starling questioned its history: known for its collections and particularly for its early engagement in favor of modern art (including the acquisition and exhibition of works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse), then destroyed during the Second World War, the museum was pillaged for its masterpieces of ‘degenerate art’ by the nazis...
Taking archaeology as her departure point to examine the trajectories of replicated and displaced objects, “Who will measure the space, who will tell me the time?” was produced in Oaxaca for her exhibition of the same title at the Contemporary Museum of Oaxaca (MACO) in 2015...
Empire’s Borders II – Passage and Empire’s Borders II – Workers are from the three-channel film installation Empire’s Borders II – Western Enterprise, Inc...
The mines at Potosí are both the site and subject of this work, also titled Potosí, by Antonio Vega Macotela...
During the week after the the 8th Festival de Performance de Cali (20-24 November 2012), San Francisco will become the setting of a multi-venue series of events organized by the Cali-based collective Helena Producciones (Wilson Díaz, Claudia Patricia Sarria-Macías, Ana María Millán, Andres Sandoval Alba, and Gustavo Racines)...
The threshold in contemporary Pakistan between the security of private life and the increasingly violent and unpredictable public sphere is represented in Abidi’s 2009 series Karachi ...
The perceived effortlessness of power, projecting above experiences of labored subordination is examined in Death at a 30 Degree Angle by Bani Abidi, which funnels this projection of image through the studio of Ram Sutar, renowned in India for his monumental statues of political figures, generally from the post-independence generation...
KLAU MICH is a TV and performance project by Dora García with Ellen Blumenstein, Samir Kandil, Jan Mech, TheaterChaosium, and Offener Kanal Kassel, during the 100 days of dOCUMENTA (13)....
Nugroho’s installations and performances have their roots in the shadow puppet rituals in Indonesia, particularly the Javanese Wayang tradition whose essence is in the representation of the shadows...
The three monkeys in Don’t See, Don’t Hear, Don’t Speak are a recurring motif in Gupta’s work and refer to the Japanese pictorial maxim of the “three wise monkeys” in which Mizaru covers his eyes to “see no evil,” Kikazaru covers his ears to “hear no evil,” and Iwazaru covers his mouth to “speak no evil.” For the various performative and photographic works that continue this investigation and critique of the political environment, Gupta stages children and adults holding their own or each other’s eyes, mouths and ears...
These hand drawn maps are part of an ongoing series begun in 2008 in which Gupta asks ordinary people to sketch outlines of their home countries by memory...
In a style that is unique of Tokoudagba, he evokes the kings, gods and their symbols related to the earth, water, air and fire, usually on a white background...