Film & Video (Film & Video)

In Goddy Leye’s installation work The Beautiful Beast , a video is projected onto a gold-colored wooden box filled with sesame seeds. The sesame seeds look like pixels underneath the video, suggesting the texture of animation. The artist portrays a strange man who writhes on the ground like a beast against this ‘pixelated’ field.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The film Sometimes It Was Beautiful by Christian Nyampeta poetically addresses the systemic conditions leading and emerging from the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which had lasting and profound effects on Rwanda and neighbouring countries like Congo. The divergent opinions of the characters, as well as suggestive gestures, settings, and marks inscribed in the landscape highlight the different approaches in addressing the slow violence linked to the enduring impact of colonialism and imperialism, the pursuit of knowledge, and the conservation of heritage, culture, and object repatriation. Structured into six chapters, the film imagines a meeting between improbable friends and interlaces dialogues, with choreography of dancers, places and objects.

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.

Photography (Photography)

These photographs document the hand and facial gestures in Moe Satt’s performance F n’ F (Face & Fingers) . Whistling and wearing minimal clothing within a bare gallery space, Moe Satt performed a choreographed sequence of gestures based upon those he observed on the streets of Yangon, Myanmar. Each photograph is simple, showing only the artist’s face and hands with a title and caption that describes the meaning of the documented gesture.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Untitled exemplifies the format that Anna Bella-Papp most commonly works in, using her hands to create delicate tablet-like reliefs within a rectangular form made out of clay. The lack of any glazes and other finishes used in traditionally in ceramics is a deliberate decision with an aim to preserve the pale hues and natural qualities of the clay. Papp’s decision to display the pieces resting flat on table tops, invites us to imagine them as landscapes or architectural structures seen from a bird’s-eye view.

Photography (Photography)

As a visual activist for the rights of Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LBGTQI), Muholi’s photographs radically transgress the conventional perception of lesbian and transgender communities in South Africa. Members of the LBGTQI community who suffer from continuous attacks — “corrective” and “curative rapes”, physical and psychological assaults, and hate crimes — Muholi works from her own community to create strong and positive images of empowered individuals. As visual statements, her photographs seek to dignify the members of an often hidden, voiceless and marginalized community.

Photography (Photography)

As a visual activist for the rights of Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LBGTQI), Muholi’s photographs radically transgress the conventional perception of lesbian and transgender communities in South Africa. Members of the LBGTQI community who suffer from continuous attacks — “corrective” and “curative rapes”, physical and psychological assaults, and hate crimes — Muholi works from her own community to create strong and positive images of empowered individuals. As visual statements, her photographs seek to dignify the members of an often hidden, voiceless and marginalized community.

Photography (Photography)

As a visual activist for the rights of Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LBGTQI), Muholi’s photographs radically transgress the conventional perception of lesbian and transgender communities in South Africa. Members of the LBGTQI community who suffer from continuous attacks — “corrective” and “curative rapes”, physical and psychological assaults, and hate crimes — Muholi works from her own community to create strong and positive images of empowered individuals. As visual statements, her photographs seek to dignify the members of an often hidden, voiceless and marginalized community.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The Third Seal—They Are Already Old. They Don’t Need To Exist Anymore is part of The Seven Seals , Tsang’s ongoing series of digital videos that are projected as installations onto the walls and ceilings of dark rooms. Using texts and computer technology, the series draws its reference from various sources—the Bible, Judeo-Christian eschatology, existentialism, metaphysics, politics, among others—to articulate the world’s complexity and the dilemmas that people face while approaching “the end of the world.” The Third Seal is a nineteen-by-twenty-seven-foot projection on a single wall that, together with sound, creates an immersive and dynamic environment.

Textile (Textile)

The title of this work by Egle Jauncems, The Paler King I , is taken from an unfinished novel by the late David Foster Wallace called The Pale King, published posthumously in 2015. Jauncems notes that the book is fragmented, following unrelated characters struggling with ennui and depression, navigating the pressures of modern reality. In her art practice, Jauncems has been interested in the lives of powerful and influential men for many years.

Painting (Painting)

In Play , the image comes from a fashion magazine from the 1950’s (USA) whose theme is costume sportswear from the 19th century. The image was first used in a series involving playing cards which have subsequently gone on to be used in a series of performances. There is cultural contextual displacement and confusion which is presented in the work which embodies the sense of – Play – that was introduced into Shimon’s work.

Painting (Painting)

The painting Index (Tokyo) includes an image of a protest march in Japan. There is some humor in this image and also cultural contextual confusion and displacement, embodied in the painting. The protest we can see on the clipping is against two things : 1)recently the Japanese government revised the constitution (some say illegally) so that the right to collective self-defense is possible; this basically re-militarizes Japan ending decades of pacifism and this sparked the largest public protests in recent years and 2) the protestors are also marching against re-starting nuclear power plants in Japan post-Fukushima.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

The figure in Armless tapers away. Muscular legs turned upright spin down into a disintegrating torso. Lines, that in another drawing would sketch out contours and volume, here seem to be strands of flesh.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Shot from the rooftop of her house in Majdal Shams, through a complex construction of moving mirrors, this video connects both sides of the border which has cut through Syrian Golan heights since the 1967 Six-Day war. Located on the cease-fire line, residents of Majdal Shams are reminded of this tragic separation on a daily basis. During the war the majority of the local population were exiled to Syria.

Residencia Milan 1 is a painting of a house surrounded by lush forest. The image depicted is both photorealistic and creates the illusion of an unfolded piece of paper, with creases and discolorations. In referring to the circulation of images, the painting raises questions of a viewer’s relationship to the image of a beautiful house: as icon, wish, or standard of beauty.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Audra Knutson’s work, The Death , is a hand-pulled linocut print inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge . Set in what appears to be a pathway inside a small town, the scene features two central figures: a man seated on a chair with a skull on his lap, and a girl writing the message ‘voilà votre mort, monsieur’ on a nearby wall. The girl’s message echoes the expression in the man’s face, who appears resigned or as described by Knutson “accepting death or a monotony in living, and not embracing beauty.” The large areas of solid ink in contrast with the delicate linework create a sense of theatricality and drama, and add to the mysterious and surreal nature of the scene.

Photography (Photography)

Back images is a series of six photographs by Sarah Lei Cheuk Wah that explore the semiotics of power and their intersection with representations of masculinity. The photographs feature what seem to be stock images of several policemen—their rugged uniforms, vehicles and weapons drenching the photographs with signs of masculinity and power as the policemen carry on with their usual tasks. The series was part of a larger exhibition entitled In Stasis where Lei transformed the booth of an art fair into what appeared to be a security area inside an airport.

Photography (Photography)

In Amantes (Lovers) Juan Carlos points his lens at his own environment, his underground (literally) studio in Havana. A beautiful and intimate image of a seedy yet casual scene of two lovers in the background foreshadowed by a beautiful young woman smoking a joint in the foreground, a very powerful and not too subtle political representation of the current realities and truth of youth life in Havana. Juan Carlos Alom is an artist known for his documentary photography of Cuba’s subcultures and underground scenes.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Designed as an installation timed spent is determined by the viewer, as with classical sculpture, Anthems is a piece that is in place, and in time, and an important genre of video within the collection. It is the overlapping of the beautiful with the impact of military ritual and pomp. The use of the sculptural props and again sound (the ideal presentation of this work is with surround sound) create a composition as visual as it is aural.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Priapus Agonistes by Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley is the first work in The Minotaur Trilogy (2013-2015), a trio of videos that reimagine the Greek myth of the Minotaur. The monstrous result of Queen Pasiphae’s infatuation with a bull, the Minotaur lived in a huge maze known as the Labyrinth where he would devour sacrificial offerings of youths and maidens. Traditionally, the story centers on Theseus and his heroic (and successful) quest to conquer the Minotaur, subsequently freeing the people of Athens from their obligations.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Head in Hands by Joe Biel is part of a larger series of drawings made in connection with the book of short stories Navigating Ghosts by Annie Buckley. Biel’s small-scale black and white drawing features a torso holding their own head in their hands, though the expression on the bodiless face maintains a serene sensibility. The edges of the drawing around the figure’s neck and torso are softened so that the figure appears ghostly, as if the character is an illusion or dream.

Painting (Painting)

Ojih Odutola uses a distinctive visual style to capture members of her family, rendering them one pen stroke at a time, until their skin resembles ribbons woven into the contours of a face, neck, or hand. The simplicity of Ojih Odutola’s compositions enables a consideration of skin, blackness, surface, and detail, all hovering out of time and space.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

This is a poignant and humorous self portrait that turns the camera on the artist’s own physical inability to cry. With non-stop cascades of “tears” coming down from his eyes, the impact of the work is in the contrast between the still image of the artist and the constant movement of the waterfalls flowing down. An image of impotency, it is also a beautiful “moving picture” in the formal sense.

Painting (Painting)

Beau Soleil #7 ’s title (translated as Beautiful Sun) gives a good sense of its effect. By virtue of a grid of dots, slightly different in size and placement, a subtle shimmering is created. In readily showing its effect as an image of light, the work exists between abstraction and representation—and perhaps points to the folly of such a distinction—rows and columns of spots become the dawn breaking through thick morning air.

Textile (Textile)

Out of simple materials, Alicia Henry creates enigmatic, somewhat troubled characters, which reveal her interest in the complexities and the contradictions surrounding familial relationships. The artist probes societal differences and how these variations affect individual and group responses to themes of beauty, the body, and broader issues of identity. Untitled explores these themes and addresses the processes through which women navigate such issues.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

In Man and Pet (2012), two benign ceramic figures smile sweetly upward. The man wraps his small companion in a hug, his arms extending in round arcs all the way to his feet. Though the expressions are strikingly similar—suggestive of Rockwellian Americana—the pet seems somewhat more genial and familiarly fuzzy than its owner, whose saurian pupils lend his face a reptilian air that belies his warm grin.

Photography (Photography)

Since the global capital expansion, billboards have been the medium of communication between the rulers and the residents of townships. In South Africa, a billboard is a relic from the times when Africans were subjects of power and when townships were restricted areas, subject to laws, municipality by-laws and ordinances regulated the movement of persons and governed who may or may not enter the township. Mofokeng references this medium for control through tracing the history of townships in South Africa.

Photography (Photography)

Jackie and Chloe by Carolyn Drake is from a series of works titled Knit Club . For this project, Drake collaborated with an enigmatic group of women in Mississippi who loosely call themselves “Knit Club”. There is a strangeness to this photograph; details of facial identity are withheld.

Painting (Painting)

Mojtaba was painted in 2015 as a part of the Bedroom Posters series. Bedroom Posters feature the same beautiful boys who could well be out of a set of fashion editorials. Mojtaba, Manuel, Titus, and a boy found on Tumblr are on the verge of becoming men, yet are narcissistic adolescents prone to fall into the trap of ideological extremes.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Her 2015 work Orión is a black flag-like cloth with glow-in-the-dark symbols embroidered in the shape of the constellation. In the place of stars, Martínez has substituted the logos of international corporations and entities that use stars as their symbol; celestial navigation commanded by the logic of international corporations. Easily spotted is the smiling face of the Carl’s Jr. / Hardee’s logo, the three-pronged Mercedes-Benz emblem, Walmart’s six-pointed asterisk, and the starry cluster of the Subaru shield.