For her work in Sharjah Biennial 14, Alia Farid traveled from the United Arab Emirates to Iran across the Strait of Hormuz to film the longest day of the summer. On Qeshm Island, where her film is set, the summer solstice is referred to as Nowruz Al Sayadeen (Farsi for “fishermen’s new year”). The work foregrounds a number of local residents whose performances draw attention to their material surroundings and natural environment–– from a brightly decorated domestic interior to an expansive sea view overlooking the Arabian Gulf.
Behold A City 4 extols the old grandeur of Manila, the nation’s storied capital – the complex nexus of heritage, modernity, and all sorts of compulsions, political or otherwise, that attempt to define it. This is not Manila whittled down to a scale model but a re-imagination of the city by Ryan Villamael in his ardor to approximate its complexity both as a physical, urban fact and an evolving concept. Behold A City 4 features an entirely new topography and arrangement.
Ryan Villamael’s deeply layered practice is informed by a rare degree of skill and dexterity as well as by vivid imagination and haunting intellectual preoccupations...
Alia Farid’s multidisciplinary practice sees the artist use video, drawing, installation and public intervention to explore various issues which habitually go unnoticed...