Photography (Photography)

Untitled (Man with Bees) is part of Curran Hatleberg’s attempt to make sense of the current state of the “American Dream”, or lack thereof. “Without question our present American experience feels increasingly strange, unnerving and dreamlike. Our country is utterly different and changed now in its present iteration – surreal and confounding – and we can’t help but regard it with a confounded stare that we hold in reserve for the most bizarre and difficult circumstances.” This image is one, like many in the series that find something poetic, supernatural, and surreal in the common human condition of middle America.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The word Takasago alludes to several things at once. Takasago is the name of a multi-billion dollar Japanese corporation, previously situated in Taiwan pre-World War II. It is also a famous Japanese Noh play, the oldest extant form of performance in Japan, combining dance, costuming/masks, acting, and operatic chants.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

All Nations are Created Special is a black and white woodcut print by the artist collective Pangrok Sulap. Emblazoned across this fantastical 10 metre long print is the Bahasa Malaysia phrase Semua Bangsa Tercipta Istimewa , which loosely translated means “All Races are Special”. Pangrok Sulap takes the translation one step further, as the title of the work declares “All Nations are Created Special”.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Shot a few months before the USA and Cuba restored diplomatic relations in 2015, The New Man and My Father looks into the quiet aftermath of one family’s individual experience of the Cuban Revolution (1953-1959). The film brings to the fore a socio-political system made for a country whose successes and failures fell upon the individual men and women who experienced it. In the film, Melis interviews his father about the Cuban Revolution, as well as the more recent re-introduction of capitalism to the island after 60 years of the US-imposed embargo.

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.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Minutos de odio contra sí mismo (Minutes of hate against itself) is a simple and powerful work about the political situation in Venezuela, replacing the stars on the flag with bullet holes. A meditation on the disillusionment of the people towards the government and nationalism. The precision of the marksman is impressive, as if “drawing” or re-making the representation of the symbol within a contemporary reality and climate.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

CAMARADERIE is a precursor to and a blueprint for Mahmoud Khaled’s later forays into queer aesthetics and modes of visual representation. This work is based on videos that the artist collected over the years through YouTube, of Egyptian professional bodybuilders exercising or rehearsing before posing in local and international competitions. The selection also includes videos of amateur young men from Cairo, who obsessively train and exhibit bodily transformations resulting from their admiration for those bodybuilders.

Photography (Photography)

Zhou Tao spent almost two years in 2017 and 2018 in an eco-industrial park at the foot of the Kunlun Mountains in China exploring the activities of humans and other species in that particular topography between the mountain, the land and the desert. From the discovery of ancient desert villages to the billions of black chickens that will be raised under the snow-covered Kunlun Mountains, the resulting film and the photographs capture the climate and landscape, listening to the desert’s chanting and whispering, while attempting to construct a unique topology. Shot during the film production, the accompanying stunning photograph Winter North Summer South No.

Photography (Photography)

Zhou Tao spent almost two years in 2017 and 2018 in an eco-industrial park at the foot of the Kunlun Mountains in China exploring the activities of humans and other species in that particular topography between the mountain, the land and the desert. From the discovery of ancient desert villages to the billions of black chickens that will be raised under the snow-covered Kunlun Mountains, the resulting film and the photographs capture the climate and landscape, listening to the desert’s chanting and whispering, while attempting to construct a unique topology. Shot during the film production, the accompanying stunning photograph Winter North Summer South No.

Textile (Textile)

A Year · Marx by Liu Ding consists of a piece of silk onto which a poem about Marx is printed using inkjet. The work is part of the silk inkjet series A Year, which features political poems from Pine Trees on the Square , a series that Liu Ding wrote for the 2015 Istanbul Biennial. The year 2015 marked a critical political juncture for China, orchestrated by its current leadership and centered around propositions for nationalism.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The single-channel video Myth of Modernity opens on historical representations of the universe in Thai Buddhist places of worship –pagodas, palaces and spirit houses. Denoting three cosmological worlds, the colored religious illustrations and ornate monuments are slowly replaced by images of anti-Yingluck protesters during the 2013-2014 Thai political crisis. Over the masses, a flying neon pyramid –the light sculpture Myth of Modernity – echoes the popular simplification of worship architecture into geometrical shapes.

Installation (Installation)

De sino à sina (From Bell to Fate) is a six-channel sound installation by Carla Zaccagnini exploring the relationship between modern Brazil and its colonial past. The sound installation is made from a recording of the bell at Capela de Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Homens Brancos, a Baroque-style chapel that is one of the first chapels in Ouro Preto (previously Vila Rica) in the region of Minas Gerais. The work references the execution of José da Silva Xavier (1746-1792), also known as “Tiradentes”.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Jeep Comics is based on the second of only two issues published by RB Leffingwell and Company in 1944–45. Though largely unknown, their protagonists, Jeep and Peep, embody the ethos of “Golden Age” comic books in which magically empowered heroes triumph over evils to boost patriotic enthusiasm.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

A Flags-Raising-Lowering Ceremony at my home’s cloths drying rack (2007) was realized in the year of the 10th anniversary of the establishment of The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. The artist asked his parents to perform a flags-raising-lowering ceremony on their home’s cloths drying rack, with the HKSAR regional flag, and the flags of PRC and The UK. Artist Lee Kit hand-painted the HKSAR regional flag following the detail instructions in “The State’s Standards of The People’s Republic of China, GB16689-1996”, issued by The State Authority of Technical Monitoring.