Film & Video (Film & Video)

In May 2014, Israeli soldiers shot and killed two teenagers, Nadeem Nawara and Mohamad Abu Daher in occupied Palestine (West Bank). Through the Forensic Architecture program, the human rights organization Defence for Children International worked with Abu Hamdan to investigate the incident. The case hinged upon an audio-ballistic analysis of the recorded gunshots to determine whether the soldiers had used rubber bullets, as they asserted, or broken the law by firing live ammunition at the two unarmed teenagers.

Installation (Installation)

Referencing psychology, philosophy, and spiritualism, A series of personal questions addressed to a Hikimawashi kappa traveling coat by James Webb is an ongoing series in which the artist poses spoken questions to objects via a speaker installed near the object on display. The questions are addressed to the objects as if they were sentient beings able to respond. Each question is left hanging, unanswered for approximately 10 seconds before the next question is posed.

Installation (Installation)

30 Proposals of Flag explores the relationships between signs, meanings, aesthetics, and nations. The artwork consists of 30 flags layered together and hanging from the ceiling. Each flag is illustrated with Jao’s rendition of a possible coat of arms derived from Taiwan’s economic and political history.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Untitled (Construction) recalls the series of glass cubes that gained Bell international recognition in the 1960s. Resembling a black-mirrored box, this recent iridescent piece produces an uncanny effect in which the interior planes seem to enclose a mysterious light. Although austere in form, Bell’s works are far from simple: he uses technology like a vacuum-coating process, to accurately control the different levels of opacity and transparency on the surface of his immaculate glass works.

Photography (Photography)

Charco portátil congelado (Frozen Portable Puddle, 1994) is a photographic record of an installation of the same name that Gabriel Orozco made at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam for the group exhibition WATT (1994). The artist arrived a week prior to the opening with no artwork to install, and created three spontaneous works from locally sourced materials. This one was made of white plastic record sleeves that Orozco arranged on the damp roof of the gallery.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Adam is an emblematic work within Jean-Charles de Quillacq’s oeuvre. The artist has created a number of pieces entitled Adam , referring to original man, incarnated in multiple objects at once. Materially, Adam is a fluorescent yellow walking rope with an epoxy coating on one side, rendering the structure rigid, demonstrative of his sculptural practice which is both conceptual and sensual.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

«I will put two heavy stones in my jacket pockets that way my body will sink deep like a deflated truck tire, no one will notice», this excerpt from “Quay West” by Koltès could echo the story depicted by Katinka Bock: the shipwreck of a small boat full of stones. The grain of the image and the framing evoke distant times, maybe the origins of cinema and the footage of the Lumière brothers. The operator’s gaze creates a landscape undetermined in space and time.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The Last Post was inspired by Sikander’s ongoing interest in the colonial history of the sub-continent and the British opium trade with China. In this animation, layers of images, abstract forms, meaning, and metaphorical associations slowly unfold at the same time that more visual myths are created. The identity of the protagonist, a red-coated official, is indeterminate and suggestive of both the mercantilist policies that led to the Opium Wars with China and the cultural authority claimed by the Company school of painting over colonial India.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

I don’t remember is a video by Yung Jake that combines his passion for both music and the visual arts. As per several of his works the video borrows from the vernacular of rap and relies on the aesthetic and stylistic qualities of music videos. A humorous interpretation of the rap and hip hop genres, the video combines scenes from urban settings and snapshots of a party as the artist raps in a drowsy monotone about having forgotten the wild night.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Like with other works of the artist, with First Piano Katinka Bock tried to go against the rules of use of clay, that is, by forcing the material to the extreme, and transferring the resulting elements into a cubic shaped volume. Thus, the resulting accumulated strata brings back the material to its very essence, the earth.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The Théâtre de poche video is inspired by Arthur Lloyd / “Human Card Index”, a magician who was famous for being able to take out of his pockets any image requested by his spectators. His coat hid over 15 000 different prints. In Aurélien Froment’s work, a magician presents images by making them appear, disappear or move in space.

Painting (Painting)

Too Many Names by Troy Chew is a patchwork of contemporary Black culture and resistance, including hand-sewn symbols and patterns found in the coats of arms of the kings of the Dahomey region (now Benin) that ruled from 1600-1900. This painting is part of the series Out the Mud, a longterm project in which the artist explores African American history through the lens of traditional mudcloth techniques found in the West African countries involved in the Transatlantic-slave trade. The title of the series references the technique and materials for making mudcloth.

Photography (Photography)

Sam Contis’s photographs explore the relationship of bodies to landscape, and the shifting nature of gender identity and expression. Horseback is part of a photographic series Contis made at Deep Springs College, one of the United States’s last all-male institutions of higher learning, located in a remote desert valley on the California–Nevada border. Horseback is a black and white photograph that depicts the arched shoulders of a horse, its slick mane splayed across its neck.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The title of Alicia Smith’s video work, Teomama , means “God Carrier” in the Aztec language of Nahuatl. It was the name given to medicine men and women who carried the bones of Huitzilopochtli—the god of war, sun, and human sacrifice in ancient Mexico, and the national deity of the Aztecs. Of the many legends featuring Huitzilopochtli, the origin story of Tenochtitlan (present day Mexico City) is perhaps one of the most well-known.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Noémie Goudal’s short film, Below the Deep South , is based on the work of palaeoclimatologist James Bendle who, while drilling in Antarctica, discovered coal beneath the ice. Bendle’s theory is that the coal is an indication that Antarctica was once a lush, green forested environment with insects and animals. It only arrived in its present position due to the shifting of tectonic plates.