Film & Video (Film & Video)

Imjingawa is Hwayeon Nam’s first foray into borrowing from the documentary form. The root of the work is a Japanese song with Korean diasporic connotations, which the artist heard inadvertently years ago. While tracking the inception and history of the song, her research explored the song’s potential to live beyond “legal, national, ideological, and geographical barriers.” The song earned its fame when it was introduced to the Japanese band, the Folk Crusaders.

Painting (Painting)

This embroidery on fabric tackles the oneiric and the uncanny to bring about visions of the world. One can discern the methods of nihonga painting (the traditional Japanese style that renders landscape and forms out of subtle shadows), but Ito upsets the balance by destroying perspective. His work is staunchly non-narrative.

Photography (Photography)

Nakayama is part of a larger body of work by Pierre Gonnord focusing on the analysis and description of the lifestyles of urban youth in large Western cities. These images reflect on new canons of beauty, and the appearances and simulacra of fashion for a new generation. In particular, these works consider themes of androgyny, crossbreeding, and recycling.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The video work Japan Syndrome is a continuation of his lines of inquiry, taking post-Fukushima Japan as a case study. The work constructs a theatrical space in which the conflict-filled life sphere of post-Fukushima Japan, and perhaps beyond it, is reenacted in a minimal yet condensed fashion. To conceive this work, the artists has recorded real conversations he had with shop employees in Kyoto, Yamaguchi and Mito from 2011 to 2013, which have been then reenacted as performances in a studio, and recorded as the final form of this piece.

Photography (Photography)

Kastura (2012) is an installation consisting of 24 black-and-white photographs of the Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto bequeathed by Kimura’s grandfather; free-standing structures on which they are hung; and ornamental plants. The photographs appear to have been taken in late 1950s soon after tours of the villa were first offered to the public. Then, as today, visitors were led by a guide and could only follow a designated route.

Photography (Photography)

Dorsky’s pieces included in the Kadist Collection are small still photographs from twelve of his most important films. Here, the still images function in the same way as his cinematographic work: Highly aesthetic, they allow for the appearance of intricate visual patterns and layers of meaning that take scenes of everyday life as its source material. Both Dorsky’s cinematic and photographic works follow a stream of consciousness that rejects representation or fixed narrative structure.

Photography (Photography)

The black-and-white photograph Men (055, 065) (2012) depicts two similarly built young men – young and slim, with dark tousled hair and a square jaw line – seated aside one another in identical outfits. It is unclear if these subjects are related, despite the obvious doubling of visual cues, and Lassry offers few hints to suggest that these men have any association beyond their sitting for the same picture. By extension, Lassry subverts conventions in portrait photography by identifying his subjects with numbers, erasing the familiarity inherent in the act of naming, Men (055, 065) functions as an anti-portrait in which anonymity supplants intimacy.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Shahbazi’s early drawings in the series “Oh No…” are reminiscent of comic strips or children’s coloring books. Subjects are rendered graphically and set against flat solid colors. The origin of these drawings is a mix of her own collection of images and the Arab Image Foundation’s collection in Beirut, Lebanon.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Related to Edie Fake’s Memory Palaces series — reimagined facades of urban lesbian bars and gay nightclubs — Personal Business draws an association between architecture and the body, with ornamental structures that are decorative and protective. Fake notes, “More and more I’m trying to bring an anarchy into that architecture, or a fantasy and ecstasy of what queer space is and can be.” A beautiful building that’s defended by an imposing front. In this way, the architecture becomes a metaphor for the constructed layers of the self.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Ukraine is under tension due to the politics of President lanoukovitch since 2010. Numerous passive demonstrations against the government have led to numerous police repression of the protestors. The demonstration ‘Euromaïdan’ in 2013 is a perfect example.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Edinburgh Castle on the Bin Bag features a model of the Edinburgh castle constructed by using shiny black cards placed on top of an open, full black plastic trash bag. The model is delicate, with detailed rendering of windows and a flagpole. Despite the negative association of black plastic trash bag, this work offers a sense of wonderment in it its scale and subject matter.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Ukraine is under tension due to the politics of President lanoukovitch since 2010. Numerous passive demonstrations against the government have led to numerous police repression of the protestors. The demonstration ‘Euromaïdan’ in 2013 is a perfect example.

Painting (Painting)

Rosalind Nashashibi’s paintings incorporate motifs drawn from her day-to-day environment, often reworked with multiple variations. The development of colour palettes in her painting work could be compared to the work in her films where she delicately draws an internal visual language which provides the viewer equal space to her protagonists. Possible readings of her work are left deliberately open, encouraging thought in terms of association rather than the imposition of a narrative structure.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Montemozolo writes of the work: “ Fireflies is the result of a sudden event—and its transformation/translation into an art work—that erupts within a life, altering its flow, suspending it, creating a momentary intensity and deviation of the flow, channeling it somewhere unexpected. This unforeseen deviation is dissected in terms of affects in the time frame of 5 minutes. The affects that emerge in the piece are characterized by a sense of movement between pain and hope, and a work of association between cancer and expectancy.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The work consists of a work inside a work. The spectator is presented with a commissioned documentary on a flat-screen Tv on the subject of the production of the making of an artwork that doesn’t exist entitled The magic and the meaning (2008). The imaginary film, The magic and the meaning , is described only within the documentary, which follows parts of the making of the film, extracts from interviews with the writer and film maker Dan Fox and the artist and maker of the work Ryan Gander; as well as showing short slow-motion sections of the film that does not exist.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In 1978, Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville made the TV series: “France / tour / detour / two / children”, in which they aimed to identify the lifestyle of French people in 12 episodes of 26 minutes each. On each episode a little boy and girl are firstly asked about their daily lives. By broadening the scope of the interview, the questions of Godard and Mieville gradually bring the protagonists to think of themselves as subjects in the history of the world, to “live and see themselves on television” with a critical point of view.

Installation (Installation)

The types of objects Feldmann is interested in collecting into serial photographic grids or artist’s books are often also found in three dimensional installations. Verging on a form of fetichism, his shoe collections are a case in point and indeed, for some exhibitions, he even asked gallery employees for their shoes. Against authorship and the commodification of art, he never gives titles or dates to his works which have infinite edition possibilities.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Agnieszka Kurant’s Placebo VIII brings together a series of imaginary pharmaceuticals invented within the fictional narratives of literature and film. Displayed in a custom cabinet, these imaginary drugs are materialized as physical objects, packaged in meticulously designed boxes, listing dosage and description information along with references to the fictional source. Each box is filled with placebo tablets.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

In “Untitled II (Mapping text)”, 2009, Langa abstracts language in an attempt to change the familiar into the absurd. With reference to comic speech bubbles, Langa combines in a sea of blue gouache a series of nuanced references to identity and politics with “Black Maria” alongside nostalgic and subtle phrases such as “mom be with me, I need u now” and “I didn’t listen.” Through this gathering of references “Untitled II (Mapping text)” forges a poetic and vulnerable site to engage with his personal experiences while simultaneously suggesting the senseless structure of language. This work resonates to larger world of art, politics and popular culture through layering assorted references, piling up meanings that are cryptic and ambivalent, yet resonant with multiple interpretations.

Coué 1 is an animated sculpture that hypnotically highlights the self-motivating leitmotiv of the ‘Coué Method’: “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.”This is the mantra that is repeated by different male and female voices in the soundtrack – first in an incomprehensible painfully slow slur, becoming clear and speeding up into a drilling hilarious sounding high pitching spin, as if helium had been inhaled. This work was commissioned by the Association GEF Psy in Nancy under the aegis of the Fondation de France in order to commemorate Emile Coué (1857-1926) who was a French behavioral psychologist and pharmacist who particularly studied the effects of positive thinking. Séchas also created a Monument to Jacques Lacan in 2002 featuring the cat, his house-style character.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Heat Waves by Kent Chan examines the contexts, politics, and proliferation of the different aesthetics of heat by drawing from the aesthetics of regions defined by hot and humid climates and associated with histories of coloniality such as ‘the global south’ and the ‘developing world’. The video takes the form of a curated broadcast or music video of historical and contemporary imagery and videos of both found and filmed footage, including media broadcasts; TikToks; DJ sets; an interview with Keanu Reeves; an excerpt of Ho Tzu Nyen’s 4 x 4 – Episodes of Singapore Art (2005); an interview with KADIST Collection artist Julian Abraham Togar; and DJ sets. The barrage of footage weaves together contrasting tropes about the tropics: depicting it as a diseased paradise; naturally abundant, yet economically poor; filled with people who are at once energetic and lazy; with dynamic aesthetics, but lacking order.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In the video Color Strip by Elsa Werth two-dimensional versions of all the national flags of the world (197 in all) are compiled into a long horizontal strip. The video is presented on a large flat-screen, approximating the size and dimensions of a national flag. As each flag slides across the screen, connections between the colors, signs, and forms of different countries and parts of the world create unexpected associations.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

In 2007 Lubaina Himid began a series of works she later called Negative Positives: The Guardian Archive (2007-2017). What started out as a one-year project, in the year celebrating the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery in the UK, continued for a decade. Taking a page or a spread of The Guardian (the most liberal newspaper in the UK and her newspaper of choice), Himid sought to expose the unconscious bias manifested in a paper that prides itself on its non-discriminatory policies.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

In 2007 Lubaina Himid began a series of works she later called Negative Positives: The Guardian Archive (2007-2017). What started out as a one-year project, in the year celebrating the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery in the UK, continued for a decade. Taking a page or a spread of The Guardian (the most liberal newspaper in the UK and her newspaper of choice), Himid sought to expose the unconscious bias manifested in a paper that prides itself on its non-discriminatory policies.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Sandra Monterroso’s video performance titled Corazón del lugar del viento (Heart of the Place of the Wind) is inspired by Seis Cielo (Six Sky), the only female Mayan ruler to be represented in classical Mayan stelae (historical monuments dedicated to the record of important events). As the artist impersonates the ruler and goddess, she performs a ritual of tying stones and an offering of clothing. Seis Cielo’s ties with the lineages of the prehispanic Tikal and Dos Pilas kingdoms were essential in understanding the role of Mayan women as mothers and wives, and especially as rulers and healers.

Painting (Painting)

El Hadji Sy is an important figure in the critical movement that followed Lépold Sedar Senghor´s Négritude ideology. Senghor supported El Hadji’s work from the start and continued to follow it, but they came together again in another cultural policy initiative, inaugurated by Senghor: the famous Villages des Arts. The village is a co-operative for artists in Dakar where each one has a professional studio.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The short two-channel video Pause/Tanmpo takes its cue from a coincidental encounter artist Bili Bidjocka had in Dakar. Walking down the corniche, he saw a boxer, a Senefalese man, training at the beach. It immediately reminded the artist of Le Boxeur—the most well-known brand of matchsticks in Cameroon.

Textile (Textile)

The Korean title for U: Repair the cowshed after losing the cow = Too late is —a famous Korean proverb meaning “you are doing something when you are already late to do it”. This work by Seulgi Lee is a nubi (traditional Korean quilt) blanket project that shows Korean proverbs expressed as geometric shapes. Nubi blankets were used as single sheet summer blankets in Korean households until the 1980s.

Painting (Painting)

Dominique Zinkpè’s works with a wide range of materials, from jute to used cars to “hôhô” figures, which come from the Cult of Twins in southern Benin as a voodoo religion symbole of fertility. His portfolio is continually morphing between mediums and subjects, tackling issues such as intimacy, sex, the sacred and the profane while linking ancestral culture with the contradictions found in today’s world. These sketches of tumultuous human drama are infused with elements of irony and satire to reveal Zinkpè’s most disturbing and arresting constructs of the imagination.