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)

In New York City’s Chinatown, subject Suat Ling Chua’s morning exercise is to practice the hula hoop. When Christian Jankowski first saw this woman he immediately got the idea to shoot Rooftop Routine . In the short video, Chua leads the group and dictates the movements that each participant has to repeat.

Painting (Painting)

The title of the painting refers to the fact that the figure’s behind is raised upwards and the face is found at the bottom of the painting, thus inverting the way in which people are normally seen. Bottom’s up is also a pun, a nod to the English toast. Quarles draws on a number of sources of inspiration, including comic book imagery, the influence of which sits alongside elements of her practice informed by life drawing classes.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Hueso de culebra (Snake Bone) arises from the stories that the artist’s grandmother used to tell him as a child about her father’s medical and spiritual practices in the southern part of Costa Rica, close to the border with Panama. One of them revolved around a plant that had various uses, from healing poisonous snake bites to predicting the future. She said, for example, that if one came across this plant during a period of drought, it could mean trouble was coming.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Baumgartner’s own excursion into war imagery is the diptych Formation . She was watching a television documentary on the Second World War, was struck by the extraordinary nature of the colour film and decided to video it. The two frames she isolated depict the shadows the planes cast on the ground and the sun glinting off their steel fuselages.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In the Soldier’s Head evokes the traumas of war through the prism of the hallucinations of a soldier. Inspired by the artist’s father,a soldier in Algeria who then suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder,the video depicts the delusions flowing from a mind ravaged by violence: a vision grown from the inside out. Like a mirage amidst a blank, desert expanse, specters are conjured as the inanimate comes to life.

NFT (NFT)

Hand Palm Echo 1 is a digital animation based on Christine Sun Kim’s staircase mural at The Drawing Center in New York (10 March – 22 May, 2022). Sun produced this NFT from a still image of the animation that features a drawn notation of the sign “echo” in American Sign Language. Visually the black and white image depicts two side by side mounds, one labelled ‘Hand’ and the other labelled ‘Palm’.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Pianoiss . . . issmo (Worse Finish)

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Indexes that either allow or inhibit the establishment of communication exist in both signed as well as spoken languages. Some differ radically depending on a variety of social, economic and geographical factors, while others are universally understood. Seemingly small and fleeting gestures can determine a sense of affiliation or a feeling of rejection.