Photography (Photography)

Chalis Katesi Ramaula is a series of 240 prints capturing Nagendra Gurung’s life, work, and colleagues from the construction sites where he has worked in Dubai and Saudi Arabia. When seen together, the sequence appears to have a cinematic temporality, as one feels the passing of the years he has endured as a migrant worker. Gurung’s subjectivity is highly present, even when looking at the most banal scenes of cranes, concrete, and other machinery, which are rapidly transforming the landscape and society of the Gulf into its own version of capitalist futurism built through the exploitation of others.

Painting (Painting)

Ventana indiscreta (Rear Window) by Karen Lamassonne takes its title from Hitchcock’s renowned 1954 classic. The painting is part of Lamassinne’s Homenaje a Cali [Homage to Cali] series, developed by the artist in 1989 in a nostalgic attempt to immortalize Cali at a time in which violence from drug trafficking had rendered it unlivable, and the generation that Lamassone had lived it up with had all but dispersed. Lamassone had formally established in Cali around the middle of the decade at a time in which the hangover from the 1971 Pan-American Games and an artistic effervescence had transformed it from a provincial sleepy town into a newly discovered urban (and sexual) labyrinth, one that was fit for the artist’s own explorations around its representation.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The Moon Also Rises by Yuyan Wang comprises a one-channel video and light installation. The work is based on a 2018 initiative in China to launch three artificial moons into orbit above major cities to provide continuous daylight. Set in an oppressively illuminated environment, the images depict lethargic crowds in megacities, surrounded by glowing neon lights, and workers in LED factories performing repetitive tasks on an assembly line in a kind of trance state.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

An early work in Sung Hwang Kim’s career, the video Summer Days in Keijo—written in 1937 is a fictional documentary, the film is based on a non-fiction travelogue, In Korean Wilds and Villages , written by Swedish zoologist Sten Bergman, who lived in Korea from 1935 to 1937. In Kim’s film, a Dutch female protagonist traces Bergman’s path in the present-day Seoul (Keijo was the Japanese name for Gyeongseong, currently Seoul). The protagonist navigates through spaces that have been rebuilt since the 1950s onwards, and the scenes are narrated by a voice-over based on Bergman’s written description of the modern city in 1937.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Leonardogillesfleur describes Myself as a Fountain : “The couple kissing in the park. Pedestrian pass by with boom box, fire truck sirens and baseball-bat sounds suggest they are in New York. But the kiss is not accomplished and saliva drips from the lover’s open mouth like a fountain of unfulfilled desire.”

Photography (Photography)

Born in 1974, Kano, Nigeria, Otobong Nkanga lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. Nkanga makes use of different mediums like drawing, performance, photography video or installation to put forward observations and sensations of the everyday influences in our social developments, environment and culture. Her works refers to autobiographical narratives and social ecological realities of spaces of her homeland and places she encounters.

Installation (Installation)

o que diriam as pedras a marte? [What would the stones say to Mars?] is a sculptural work consisting of two parts by arquivo mangue.

Photography (Photography)

The Italian photographer Tina Modotti is known for her documentation of the mural movement in Mexico. She had a keen eye for architectural composition, and captured eloquent details using a delicate platinum print process. In 1929 she was deported from Mexico because of her involvement in the Communist party and went to Europe.