This image is an extract from a notebook in the archives of doctor Fakhouri that lists the cars that have been used for bombs between 1975 and 1991. Each page of the notebook contains a collage of an image of a car with the same make, model and color as the exploded car with a text in Arabic that gives the details of the place, time and date of the explosion, the number of people in the accident, the perimeter of destruction, the weight and the type of explosive. The images of the cars made visible are only equivalents since the cars that actually exploded are totally destroyed.
It is a little known fact that Lebanese historians were also gamblers during the war. They met every Sunday at the race courses. Race after race, the historians were positioned behind the press photographers who were there to take a picture of the winning horse passing the finishing line.
Fade In (the whole title of the film is actually the entire five page script) is a collaboration with the Danish artist collective Superflex (group of freelance artist–designer–activists committed to social and economic change, founded in 1993 by Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen and Bjørnstjerne Christiansen). There are several time layers to understand the story behind this film. In 1601, the San Jago set sail from Goa for Lisbon; the cargo included the first consignment of South East Asian porcelain destined for the European market.
Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)
One Day in the Mountain is a bilingual calligraphic performance piece written in ink superimposed with food leftover from a meal. The eponymous text: “One day in mountain is worth two thousands years in the world.” is written horizontally from left to right in both English and Chinese, following the writing order of modern Chinese instead of the traditional vertical right to left. With the word “is” migrating from the middle of the English phrase to be surrounded by Chinese characters, the resultant text appears to be spatially illustrating the meaning of being isolated in the mountain.
For the last few years, Che Onejoon has been focusing on the relationships between African countries and North Korea. He has attempted to interpret the ongoing Cold War in the Korean peninsula from a new geopolitical perspective. His resulting body of work focuses on the memorial monuments, statues and architectures that were built in 13 different African countries by North Korean government.
The sculpture And Shadows Will Follow is an angle piece that articulates a space since its appearance highly changes depending on the point of view. Initially conceived for an exhibition with natural light, this work diffracts light and projects a shadow like a cut-out. Surprisingly the work stands like a drawing in space, a graph and its imprint, a line and a point.
From Green to Orange is a series of silver films immersed in a bath of dye and rust. While the perception of the subject is made difficult by the chemical reaction, vegetation becomes discernible at a closer look. Thu Van Tran interferes in the depths of a mystery, in the density of a hallucinated dream.
Mooi indie (which translates to “Beautiful Indies”) is a term used to depict the beauty of nature in the East Indies during the period of Dutch colonialism in Indonesia. The term is usually used to describe a painting, romanticising the alluring tropics through the lens of European imperialism. Later in the 1950s, the prominent Indonesian painter S. Sudjojono, who is known as one of the founding fathers of Indonesian Modern Art, publicly rejected the Mooi Indie genre as Indonesian art.
Che Onejoon’s unsettling video My Utopia opens with a round table of women asking and answering the questions “Who am I? Where did I come from? Where should I go?” One of the women featured is Monique Macías, the daughter of Francisco Macías Nguema, the first Prime Minister of Equatorial Guinea.
The essay film How to Improve the World by Nguyen Trinh Thi takes us into an indigenous village of the Jrai people in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, in Gia Lai province. It begins with sound – perhaps a hammer, or a gong – the lack of image making its identification difficult. A landscape emerges of an open field where a farmer tends his grazing cow herd.
Landscape Series no. 1 presents landscape as a “quiet witness of history.” It began with searches of online archives of Vietnamese news-media, for images of figures in landscapes “pointing, to indicate a past event, the location of something gone, something lost or missing.” The uniformity is striking but the sequence is subtly structured: the typology hints at narrative progression, though of an uninformative narrative, lacking details.
Ha Tae-Bum’s “White” series, started in 2008, begins with photographic images from the mainstream media depicting sites of conflict or crisis. The artist eliminates human presence, miscellaneous details, and all color from the images, then “rebuilds” them into quiet, achromatic models with thin white paper. Once complete, the models are photographed in a nearly identical composition as the original image.
He Xiangyu’s Terminal 3 presents excerpts from the lives of young African acrobats attending the Hebei Wuqiao Acrobatic Arts School in China. Acrobatics, which had a rich history as a court display in imperial China, is now integral to the cultural industries and tourism sector in Wuqiao, continuing a legacy of expending bodies for monetary gain. From 2016 to 2019, He intermittently went to Wuqiao Acrobatics School in Hebei Province to record the daily lives of the students who study a variety of acrobatic skills during their year-long program.
Che Onejoon started working with photography in mandatory military service as an evidence photographer for the South Korean Combat Police recording different incidents for proof...
The Atlas Group is a research and artistic project founded by Lebanese artist Walid Raad in 1999...
Nguyen Trinh Thi is a moving image pioneer, not only within the landscape of contemporary art in Vietnam, but also broader South East Asia...
The Propeller Group was established in 2006 as a cross-disciplinary structure...
Thea Djordjadze was born in 1971 in Tiflis, Georgia...
Having grown up in China during a period of rapid urbanization and social change, He Xiangyu is especially attentive to the mutability of things and environments...
Bakudapan Food Study Group is a study group that discusses ideas about food...
Zheng Guogu founded the artistic group Yangjiang Group in 2002 with Chen Zaiyan (b...
Ha Tae-Bum (b...
Thu Van Tran grew up in the paradox of the dismantlement of the French colonial empire in Vietnam...
This image is an extract from a notebook in the archives of doctor Fakhouri that lists the cars that have been used for bombs between 1975 and 1991...
It is a little known fact that Lebanese historians were also gamblers during the war...
Fade In (the whole title of the film is actually the entire five page script) is a collaboration with the Danish artist collective Superflex (group of freelance artist–designer–activists committed to social and economic change, founded in 1993 by Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen and Bjørnstjerne Christiansen)...
The sculpture And Shadows Will Follow is an angle piece that articulates a space since its appearance highly changes depending on the point of view...
Ha Tae-Bum’s “White” series, started in 2008, begins with photographic images from the mainstream media depicting sites of conflict or crisis...
Drawing & Print
One Day in the Mountain is a bilingual calligraphic performance piece written in ink superimposed with food leftover from a meal...
For the last few years, Che Onejoon has been focusing on the relationships between African countries and North Korea...
From Green to Orange is a series of silver films immersed in a bath of dye and rust...
Mooi indie (which translates to “Beautiful Indies”) is a term used to depict the beauty of nature in the East Indies during the period of Dutch colonialism in Indonesia...
Che Onejoon’s unsettling video My Utopia opens with a round table of women asking and answering the questions “Who am I? Where did I come from? Where should I go?” One of the women featured is Monique Macías, the daughter of Francisco Macías Nguema, the first Prime Minister of Equatorial Guinea...
He Xiangyu’s Terminal 3 presents excerpts from the lives of young African acrobats attending the Hebei Wuqiao Acrobatic Arts School in China...
The essay film How to Improve the World by Nguyen Trinh Thi takes us into an indigenous village of the Jrai people in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, in Gia Lai province...