Central Exhibition title, Everywhere but Now
Chief Curator: Adelina von Fürstenberg
Venue: GENI TZAMI
HARIS EPAMINONDA (Cyprus) / video-photos
Born in 1980 in Nicosia, Cyprus. Lives in Berlin.
In the last few years, the artist has produced a series of radiant, emotional, audio--‐visual works,
which are long enough to soak into the viewer’s consciousness yet short enough to assume the
qualities of a vision. Reality is kept at arm’s length, its absence not particularly noticed, while the
present is lost in a fictionalized past. Most of Epaminonda’s recent video works are based on re-‐shot excerpts of film and television footage which she then subtly reworks.
For her latter photographic series (all Untitled, 2008--‐ongoing), Epaminonda shot hundreds of
Polaroid images of printed matter. In her sequenced display, these re--‐imaged images smack of an
Everyman traveller. The time frame of these images is hesitant to divulge itself, while the
contemporary style of each image’s cropping seems anachronistic to the thing it depicts; frame and
photograph are always at odds. Yet despite this formal discord, there is an undeniable
seductiveness to Epaminonda’s series. The viewer encounters camels, peacocks, and zebras; oddly
cropped palms, and impossibly steep ravines; painterly landscapes and cinematic vistas.
The grain of the photograph – sometimes a burnished aubern glow and other times a classic
monochrome – renders each image into a wistful and painterly abstraction of the concrete. The
romanticism of such images mimics the register of fin--‐de--‐siecle expedition journals and the
utopian exoticism of twentieth--‐century travel writing. Shown in their hundreds, Epaminonda’s
Polaroids become a hallucinatory image of travel’s own desire. […]
‘With the Polaroids, I am revisiting and recapturing a world that seems to be full of fragmented
moments and instances,’ says Epaminonda. ‘But I am doing so from a future perspective.’ Thus, for
the artist, time folds in on itself. ‘What is in the image is the past caught in the present, which is the
future,’ she adds.
If shared memory of civilization is not only represented by the memorials it chooses to erect, but
also by those it chooses to photograph, then Epaminonda’s work interrogates this mobile
memorialisation to her own ends. It prises open the static immobility of photographed objects to
reveal the plausibility of other worlds. ‘Images have no bones or flesh,’ says the artist. ‘They are
more like air, having the capacity to “ressurect”.’
HÜSEYIN KARABEY (Turkey) / Video
Born in 1970 in Istanbul, where he lives and works
Director, writer, and producer Huseyin Karabey was born in 1970 to a Kurdish family and studied at
Uludağ University and Marmara University. After making over a half dozen documentary films from
the 1990s through the 2000s, he made his first feature, MY MARLON AND BRANDO (2008).
The film premiered at Rotterdam, won the prize for Best New Narrative Filmmaker at Tribeca,
and earned him praise as a director to watch.
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No darkness will make us forget by Hόseyin Karabey is a well choreographed animation about Hrant
Dink, the Istanbul--‐based Armenian journalist killed by 17--‐year old Turkish nationalist in 2007. This
short film highlights his wife Raquel Dink's speech at his funeral --‐ attended by hundreds of
thousands of Armenians and Turks alike --‐ an intense and strong message which becomes a
manifesto of peace and tolerance.
ROSANA PALAZYAN (Brazil) / video installation
Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1963. Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.
Rosana Palazyan makes works of art that are subtle, brutal, and sublime. Her content reveals the
reality of the everyday experience of the people with whom she talks and works; it brings forth the
inner thoughts of adolescents in detention and people. They are the untouchables, tabooed. The
opportunity she offers to the people she engages are, more often than not, silenced as well as
unseen. The words her invitation elicits are often surprising and even shocking, not only for the
violence and abuse they express but for the tenderness and hope. Her presentation is so delicate
that it could be overlooked or dismissed were it not so alluring that one cannot but inspect it closely
to encounter its message — and often shrink back in alarm. While she has made powerful
installations, the work is often small in scale, drawing you close to inspect detail, into an intimate
relationship with the objects.
A room with a circular video projection on the wall with images of my embroideries mixing other
images-a kind of poetical video. The video projector needs to be a one that is a high definition
without need to be done in a dark room. I don’t like dark room for this kind of work. I did an exhibition
last year here with this kind of projector, with a not dark room, and it was so beautiful. Please, see
the drawings, the other elements on the room: Threads on the floor--‐ with different kind of blue and
green. I will need to know about the Mediterranean colour. Using a big quantity of threads I will draw
on the floor (as you can see in the drawing). A wood deck--‐ an old wood, from demolition places:
The public will be in this deck to see
the work. I don’t know yet if the people could walk at the lateral of the room. As it is an installation,
many things will be decided only when I will be there to install the work. I would like to show at the
exhibition, the handkerchief that my grandmother did in Greece (at the Red Cross, when she was
waiting to go to Brazil). This piece is with me now. I think that everything will start in this object. It is
a small piece, and I need to think a way to show this piece in this room.
(Rosana Palazyan)
JAFAR PANAHI (Iran) / video
Born in Mianeh (Iran) in 1960. Lives and works in Teheran.
Jafar Panahi trained as a director with Iranian television, for whom he subsequently made several
shorts and documentaries. Afterwards he worked as Abbas Kiarostami’s assistant director. Panahi's
first feature film came in 1995, entitled The White Balloon. This film won a Camera d'Or at the
Cannes Film Festival. His second feature film, The Mirror, received the Golden Leopard Award at
the Locarno Film Festival. He received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2000 for The
Circle. Panahi also directed Crimson Gold in 2003, which brought him the Un Certain Regard Jury
Award at the Cannes Film Festival. Panahi also won the Berlin Silver Bear in 2006 for Offside. This
is not a film was premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012 and his last feature Closed Curtain
won the Silver Bear for Best Script at the Berlin Film Festival in 2013.
The Accordion is focused on two young street musicians playing the accordion and the tablas to
earn their living. One day, while they are playing in front of a mosque, their accordion is taken away
from them by a man. They begin to look for him and suddenly, in the maze of the bazaar, they
recognize the sound of their accordion and discover the same man sitting on the floor and begging
while playing their instrument.
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ZINEB SEDIRA (Algeria) / installation
Born in Algeria. she lives and work in London.
Zineb Sedira’s work is focused on language and storytelling. Dealing with mobility and colonial
legacies, as well as intergenerational transmission, her videos and photographs have always a
personal point of view, in order to underline the importance of the oral memory and to analyse a
larger discussion on collective memories and stories.
GAL WEINSTEIN (Israel) / painting /sculpture
Born in 1970 in Ramat Gan (Israel). Lives and works in Tel Aviv.
Gal Weinstein is one of the leading artists of the younger Israelian generation. His works are
characterized by sensitivity to material and space, preoccupation with surface via inferior synthetic
materials, camouflage and substitutes, and a fundamental ambivalence regarding the potential
political content implied by the work.
Fire Tires, high sculptures made of wax, wool, polyester, styrofoam and graphite, is based on
images published in the press. The work may be considered as a political image evoking notions of
'with or against', 'order or disorder' or 'involvement or protest'. Notions that are related to the image
rather than its specific object for it is not the object that is put up 'against something' or 'with
something' but rather the political image as a brand – the difference between expression and
opinion. This work also easily translates as a universal symbol that reflects rubber production, cheap
fuel, social--‐political implications as well as environmental devastation.
Venue: ALATZA IMARET
BEFORELIGHT (Greece/Thessaloniki) / light installation
BEFORELIGHT is a Greek--‐based creative group that carries out artistic experiments with the use
of light.
Members: Eliza Alexandropoulou, Dimitra Aloutzanidou, Cristina Ampatzidou, Konstantina
Evangelou, Kelly Efraimidou, Dimitris Theocharoudis, Maria Lazaridou, Vasilis Ntovros and Eirini
Steirou.
BEFORELIGHT conceptualizes designs and applies light art and design, in an effort to encourage
public collective experience with natural or artificial light. They follow a process which takes site
specificity into account, along with the innovative use of old and new lighting devices. The team
members use expertise from architectural and stage lighting design, while BEFORELIGHT group
creates light installations and light art happenings in order to present the dynamic nature of light.
Beginning with our need to collaborate with the local community, we're thinking of making a research
on the neighbourhood around Alatza and get to know the residents, the shop-owners, the students
who live there and collect some information (personal stories, photos, objects etc) through filming,
photo shooting and texting. We are very interested on the way this monument is placed on the urban
tissue with all the houses surrounding it. For locals, Alatza Imaret is their neighbourhood, the first
image that see when they open the windows in the morning, the place where they hang around in a
hot summer day. In a way, the historic aspect of this monument has been transformed into the
personal stories of the neighbourhood. The main part of the installation will be developed under the
canopy of the building. There could be placed a number of surfaces designed with the form of QR
codes so as to create different arabesque motives. Our goal is that these QR codes can be read by
a mobile camera and present the collected information, as described above The surfaces could be
made either form glass (as a reference to the art of vitraux) or plexiglass and the point is to be
perforated in some parts and enhanced with some colorful parts so as to interact with the physical
light during daytime as well as with light sources at
night. We are really fond of this idea because the qr code, in context, is a modern source of
information and historiography and as a form it bears great ressemblance with the arabesque
motives of the islamic word. Furthermore, the vitraux tecnique has a great interaction with light and
is a trace of the colorful lost minaret of Alatza Imaret --‐ distinguishable for its colours.
(Beforelight)
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GÜLSÜN KARAMUSTAFA (Turkey) / video installation
Born in Ankara in 1946. Lives and works in Istanbul.
Gόlsόn Karamustafa reflects on the sociopolitical and economic shifts of the past ten years and the
accompanying move toward a global economy. As an artist she addresses cultural displacement
and economic nomadism in a universal aesthetic language that allows for a multivalent reading of
her work. Over time Karamustafa's works have addressed and questioned various tropes of the so-‐called Orient. By appropriating the work of Eugθne Delacroix, Jean--‐Auguste--‐Dominique Ingres,
and other nineteenth--‐century orientalists, Karamustafa allows for a complex reading of the
expressions of male desire, whether that of the French maestro or the Turkish Sultan. Among other
interesting issues that I came across during my visit to Thessaloniki, the images of the ‘Jewish
Porters’ that I saw at the Museum of Photography highly impressed me. The ghosts of those photos
followed me through my surveys in the city at other exhibitions as well as in our visit to the White
Tower, always reminding me the images of other porters from many Mediterranean ports. I live in
Istanbul and I have experienced the representational language of photography introducing my city
with porter photographs to the world scene to emphasize the poverty of the country until the end of
80s and I know the hidden language of such images well. This interest gave way to search for the
porter photographs from the Mediterranean ports and what I have witnessed was more than I could
expect. Also many of them, being in the form of postcards raised new questions for me.
(Gόlsόn Karamustafa)
ANGE LECCIA (France) / video projection
Born in 1952 in Minerbio (Corsica). Lives and works in Paris.
Major figure on the French contemporary art scene, Ange Leccia produces films, installations and
deploys video projections in architectural interventions and arrangements, to relay stories of
personal and public dramas. He is professor at the Ιcole nationale supιrieure d'arts de CergyPontoise (ENSAPC) and directs research for young artists at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
The image flows slowly. It shows the face of a young woman under the water. Thanks to the tight
framing and the white background, the context disappears. The viewer does not know anything of
this female figure whose dress in tulle is a too feeble clue to allow an identification. The story
became an abstraction. And time goes in a loop, without direction. This work is about breathing:
considering the visual saturation in our contemporary world, Nymphea chooses to disappear. The
work itself is hollowed out in order to preserve energy in a paradoxical way. Ange Leccia chooses
the water as a screen that waits for the mental projections of the viewer. The fluidity on the screen is
then a way of emphasizing the transformation that will take place in the exchange. The young
woman is an allegory, a perception, a process that is constantly
changing.
MARK MANGION (Malta) / video projection
Born in Malta in 1976. Lives and works in Paris and Valletta.
Mark Mangion studied Painting (Parsons School of Design ‘01) and Sculpture (Royal College of Art
’05). His research merges curating practices and art production repositioning them as site-specific
ventures, generating diverse structures, filtered through visual culture resulting in multimedia
processes with a central focus on public systems and cross--‐field collaboration. In 2008 he founded
Malta Contemporary Art, an ongoing project, which has to date involved over 100 different
collaborators. In 2012, he launched Parallel Borders, a long--‐term project established as a roving
platform focusing on a multidisciplinary
collective operating in significant theoretical fields and territories of political relevance around the
world.
Border Stories (WT) is a film presenting a collection of compelling situations documenting a journey
of isolated moments in the lives of individuals living between two seas along the bordering stretch of
land between the Dead Sea in the West Bank and Mediterranean Sea in Israel. Reflecting on a
diversity of realities of the Palestinian and Israeli people, often hijacked by political stalemate and
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territorial and religious conflict, this film seeks to reveal a web of poignant, poetic and mundane
stories of ordinary people and communities and their everyday lives, positioning itself as an
objective observation of place, time, culture and landscape. Scanning both sides of the border, a
complex non-linear and non-confrontational narrative unfolds engaging with a series of
environments in a visually stunning meditation of this land.
PETER WÜTHRICH (Switzerland) / photos
Born in 1962 in Bern, where he lives and works.
Peter Wüthrich juxtaposes the primary function of books as carriers and transmitters of knowledge
and meaning with highly poetic images based on a humanistic view of the world. […] By
transforming accidental passersby --‐ ordinary people the artist happens to meet on the streets of
the respective city --‐ into angels with the help of books as wings, the artist takes on the role of God
and also answers some fundamental questions about the essence of angels: Are angels of this
world? And if so, can they be cosmopolitan? Can angels be considered French or American or
German or Asian, or aren't nall angels “Angels of the World“?
“Salut au monde!”
“I see the cities of the earth and make myself at random a part of them, I am a real Parisian, I am a
habitan of Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Constantinople, I am of Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, I
am of London, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Limerick, I am of Madrid, Cadiz, Bercelona, Oporto,
Lyons, Brussels, Bern, Frankfort, Stuttgart, Turin, Florence; I belong in Moscow, Cracow, Warsaw,
or northward in Christiania or Stockholm, or in Siberian Irkutsk, or in some street in Iceland, I
descend upon all those cities, and rise from them again. I see African and Asiatic towns, I see
Algiers, Tripoli, Derne, Mogadore, Timbuctoo, Monrovia, I see the swarms of Pekin, Canton,
Benares, Delhi, Calcutta, Tokio, I see Teheran, I see Muscat and Medina and the interventing
sands; I see Egypt and the Egyptians, I see the pyramids and obelisks, I see ranks, colors,
barbarisms, civilizations, I go among them, I mix indiscriminately, and I salut all the inhabitants of the
earth. Each of us allow’d the eternal purports of the earth, each of us here as divinely as any is
here.”
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Venue: STATE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
(MONI LAZARISTON)
BILL BALASKAS (Greece/Thessaloniki) / installation
Born in Thessaloniki. Lives and works in London.
Bill’s videos and installations have participated in more than 50 exhibitions and festivals around the
world. Venues where his work has been exhibited include Musιe des Abattoirs, Toulouse;
Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki; British Film Institute, London; BolteLang
Gallery, Zurich; A Foundation (Liverpool, UK). Furthermore, he is an awarded writer (British Council
of Greece, 2005) and screenwriter (Worldfest Houston International Film Festival, 2006). The arts
have not remained unaffected by the unprecedented economic crisis that still lingers: parts of the art
market have shrunken, severe budget cuts are implemented by art institutions and artists face
increasing difficulty in their effort to produce new work and support themselves. In many cases, mit
is evident that culture is not a priority for policymakers, as well as for many people around the world
who struggle to satisfy some of their most basic needs. The neon sculpture Culture reflects on this
situation, by not being able to perform its major function: lighting up. The source of its power (the
socket) appears too far to be reached. Inevitably, then, in order for Culture to shine, either the work
should be moved closer to the source of power, or some extra element has to be added between the
neon’s cable and the socket, in order to establish a connection. At the same time, by being written
with antique lettering, the work also alludes to other aspects of the crisis. Thus, Culture could be
perceived as a reference to the Greek crisis and the way it has redefined Greece’s image as a
global symbol of socioeconomic failure. Or, perhaps, one could associate the work with Latin and
the case of Italy, which has played its own role in the European crisis. Notably, the blue colour of the
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neon is used as both countries’ national colour in various occasions, like, for example, in sports
(national teams). Finally, one could add another level of interpretation associated with the evidently
“kitsch” aesthetic of the work, which imitates an ancient visual style through a banal contemporary
material. In this context, the work may constitute an invitation to rethink the (visual) culture of the
pre-crisis era and reexamine its true value. At a time when the extravagant, consumerist lifestyle of
the recent past seems largely out of place, art should make a stance by calling for simplicity,
directness, “honesty” and, in the end, elemental beauty.
(Bill Balaskas)
PARIS PETRIDIS (Greece/Thessaloniki) / photos
Born in Thessaloniki in 1960.
He studied economics at the University of Thessaloniki and political economy at the University of
New York. A professional photographer since 1992, he has exhibited his work both in Greece and
abroad. Paris Petridis explores the creation of our collective conscience. In The Rum-Orthodoz
School of Istanbul he photographs internal spaces from the school of the diminishing Hellenism in
Istanbul provoking the suRface of mental images that seem to be out of time, a transitory stage of
the illusion produced by the historical narration. These internal landscape constitute, finally,
something more than snapshots of History; they are the traces of an encounter of Today and the
Historical Time. When I first laid eyes on Istanbul’s working Greek schools in July 2006, words failed
me. Built in the last quarter of the nineteenth century by a then flourishing Greek Orthodox diaspora,
with moving dignity they defend the community’s bourgeois cosmopolitanism against the starkness
of reality. Over the year that followed, I would return again and again to their austere magnificence
only to find myself swept up each time in a maelstrom of ambivalence: the alienation of the empty
spaces and the largesse of their architecture, the atmosphere of stateliness and the absence that
does not detract from it, the objects’ perishability and their persistent claims to utility value,
decimated numbers and continuity in the education conveyed, a sense of loss and the reassuring
certainty that home is where meaning has not leaked away. Documents of national history or data
from the era of the real, lost homelands or education missed: in every case, this mute record is an
audible echo of memory, a glimpse of the lines on our palms.
(Paris Petridis)
PANOS TSAGARIS (Greece) / paintings
Born in Athens in 1979. Lives and works in New York.
The unique artistic nature of Panos Tsagaris’ practice is focused and based on an esoteric
investigation. An investigation that brings to light and at the same time confronts various religious
and spiritual traditions, values and ideals, such as spirituality, death, the unknown, our existence,
the passing to the next higher level, the beginning of the transcendent consciousness. Very much
influenced and impressed by mysticism and the occult, Tsagaris, through his mixed media art
practice (painting, drawing, photography, performance) charges mystical symbols and allegories and
reinforces their magical and disarming powers.
READ YASSIN (Lebanon) / sculpture
Born in 1979 in Beirut, where he lives and works.
Raed Yassin graduated from the Theatre Department of the Institute of Fine Arts in Beirut in 2003.
He is a visual artist, curator, and musician. As a starting point, Raed's work often takes an
examination of his own personal narratives, as well as those of the collective history that surround
him, through the lens of consumer culture and mass production. He is also a founding member of
Atfal Ahdath a Beirut-based art collective.
Lebanon has long struggled to come to terms with the aftermath of its civil war (1975-1990). In an
attempt to formulate the cycle of this unaccounted history, Raed Yassin has chosen an unorthodox
and innovative way of attempting to represent -‘frieze’ as it were- important historical events of
Lebanese contemporary history. His work struggles with the impossibility of reading things of the
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past in a comprehensive way. In China he shows seven Chinese porcelain vases, produced at
Jingdezhen-China’s capital of porcelain. Depicting key battles of the Lebanese civil war, amongst
others the War of the Hotels (1975-1976), the Battle for Tal al-Zaatar (1976), the Israeli invasion of
Beirut (1982) and the so-called War
of Liberation (1989). These vases are part-beautiful object, part-historical document, and part-massproduced product. They echo the ancient tradition of recording victories at battle on vases and
ceramics for the sake of posterity, as well as a domestic decorative readymade that can easily be
found in any Lebanese home. Yassin decided to detail battles that were instrumental for territorial,
demographic and political shifts, and whose ramifications are still tangible today. The circularity of
the vases hint at an impossibility of closure-there is no beginning and no end when we view the
vases, reflecting the unresolved situation in present-day Lebanon.
Venue: MUSEUM OF BYZANTINE CULTURE
ADRIAN PACI (Albania) / video projection / sculpture
Born in Shkodra (Albania) in 1969. Lives and works in Milan.
Dealing with contemporary issues such as migration and identity, his video production tells about
fragments of humanity the artist has experienced. His works are very often a reflection on the
themes of home, emotional bonds, intended both as personal and public values.
The Column is a project Paci has been working on for a long time, which required complex
organisation and hard work. It consists of a video and a series of photographs representing the sea
journey of a block of marble that, after being extracted from a Chinese quarry, is carried on a cargo
ship and then carved on board until being transformed into a classicalstyle column. In the work, the theme of travel is thus associated with the expanded economic
strategies pursued by our society. The Column relates to commercial traffics and factory-‐ships,
sense of work and the value of classical culture, represented in one of its most emblematic
elements: the column. The anecdotic element is, however, removed from the artwork, which
ultimately carries strong metaphorical value.
Working in the highly specialised medium of mosaic, Brothers is a complex remaking of a simple,
familiar, type of family image. Two children gazing out impassively. The image must be derived from
a photograph or a video still. What could we know of these two? What does the image reveal of their
story? Whose children? Where? When? The answer to all of these questions is... little or nothing but
the image itself. The medium itself reclaims a banal image, lending it substance, materiality. The
process of making the mosaic is analytical and painstaking, rendering blur or distortion with as much
scrutiny as any determining facial
features or embodied gestures that might have been discernible in the original image. Paci often
reworks a found image, or one close to his own home life, into another medium, such as the fresco.
The process confers a kind of ritualised ownership over an image that cannot be possessed.
Venue: ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF THESSALONIKI
DAVID CASINI (Italy) / installation
Born in 1973 in Montevarchi (Arezzo). He lives and works in Milan.
A distinguishing characteristic of David Casini’s art is the way in which he approaches the practice of
manufacture, with particular regard to investigation of materials. Casini creates miniatured
landscapes made of ceramic and quartz surrounded by a certain kind of nostalgic kitsch feeling,
developing an interest in spatial/environmental installations. Installation
The works of David Casini present a clearly elastic perception of time that appears primed for
unexpected leaps, both forward and backward. Indeed, this malleable--‐time trait is particularly well-‐suited for recuperating artisanal styles and materials of past epochs for futuristic visions with a
scientific, or to be more exact, alchemic accent. Casini’s present body of work results charged with a
totally new energy which enables very different heterogeneous elements to coexist: vintage
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manufactured articles, biological elements, precious finds that together give origin to new symbols.
Like a collector, the artist imprisons gathered objects according to curious geometries, intimating
parallel and imaginary dimensions. Such is the case of the sculpture group “The Return of the
Illogical Habit”: corals that become one with models of unauthorized buildings that actually existed
along the Mediterranean coast.
Venue: MACEDONIAN MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
JACQUES BERTHET (Switzerland) / photos
Born in 1949 in Geneva, where he lives and works.
Berthet began to explore the medium of photography at the beginning of the 1980s, after having
worked with painting and theater. His photographs, always conceived on the principle of the series,
show a transformation of the landscape thanks to the act of the filing of the industrial architecture
memory. Berthet’s researches on nature have been widely exposed both in Switzerland and in
Europe.
I began my study at an ancient Spanish olive grove on the road to Morella, in the Castellon region,
in the autumn of 2006. The weather was still warm, the harvest about to begin. The sun--‐bleached,
perfectly runded pebbles on the ground contrast with black trunks of the trees planted hundreds of
years ago, perhaps a thousand years ago, some of them. They reminded me of sculptures.
In the square viewfinder of my camera, I see torsos, huige statues, gigats, and I think of
Michelangelo’s slaves; natural backlighting draws a portrait gallery that remind me of Jacques
Lacarriιre’s description in L’etι grec [Greek Summer]. “These massive, heavy, bulging olive trees,
gnarled or gouged by deep fissures, twisted, gutted, bearing a striking resemblance to monstrous
gnomes, with the deadpan and mocking countenances of spirits of the woods stuck to such trees
like heroes transforms into plants and immobilized half way in their own metamorphosis.
(Jacques Berthet, exerps from L’ombre et la forme, February 2010)
SHEBA CHHACHHI (India) / video projection
Born in 1958 in Harar (Ethiopia). Lives and works in New Delhi.
The roots of the artistic path of Sheba Chhachhi lie in the complexity of India, where wealth and
poverty face off across a territory permeated by profound religious spirituality. In her work, she uses
photography, texts, salvaged objects and sculpture. The themes addressed range from mythical and
social consideration of the human body (especially the female body) to ecological pollution and
urban transformation, through continuous reference to antique iconography. The theme of water,
and in many cases of its absence, is a leitmotiv running through many of the works by Chhachhi,
such as the video
The Water Diviner. An elephant – a deeply rooted icon of Indian culture – is immersed in water,
conveying a sense of all its elegance but also of its fragility. This work points to a deeper way of
thinking about the problem of the river: an ecological problem that faces us, but also the mirror of a
spiritual culture that is always a part of Chhachhi’s work.
Venue: PERIPTERO 6
MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ (Serbia) / video projection
Marina Abramović was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1946.
A pioneer of performance as a visual art form, Abramović has used her body as both subject and
medium of her performances to test her physical, mental, and emotional. Characterized by
endurance and pain -and by repetitive behavior, actions of long duration, and intense public
interactions and energy dialogues- her work has engaged, fascinated, and sometimes repelled live
audiences. She has received many honors, including a Golden Lion at the 47th Venice Biennale
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(1997); a Bessie (2003); and awards from the International Association of Art Critics (2003, 2007).
Abramović has had major exhibitions and performances at the Garage Art Center, Moscow (2011);
Manchester International Festival (2011); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010); Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum (2005); Whitney Biennial (2004); Documenta (1977, 1982, 1992); and the
Venice Biennale (1976, 1997, 2009).
In a small house with oversized furniture, located in a rice field in Asia, some children wearing army
clothes and weapons, start playing war, creating between each other two armies and using
children’s toys, laser weapons, machine guns and helicopters. Slowly, as the game progresses, they
start imitating war scenes as seen on TV, such as negotiations and death scenes. At the end of the
film, the children are coming out of the house and
they deposit their weapons in front of it. The smallest child comes out in the end with a burning
bramble stick in his hand and lights the pile of weapons. All the children leave while the pile is
burning.
In over twenty countries around the world, children are direct participants in war. Denied a childhood
and often subjected to horrific violence, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 children are serving as
soldiers for both rebelgroups and government forces in current armed conflicts.
GHADA AMER (Egypt) / sculpture
Born in Egypt in 1963. Lives and works in New York.
Ghada Amer studied painting and fine arts in Nice, Boston and Paris, and has been exhibiting her
works since the early 1990s. From the very beginning of her career, Amer has been engaged in an
investigation of the stereotypical notions, images, and techniques of femininity, as they are played
out both in the visual arts and in everyday life.
Ghada Amer’s elaborately embroidered paintings and sculptures examin sexuality, beauty, and
gender conventions. The sculptures are hollow, egg--‐shaped works: The Words I love the most,
made from bronze, connects Arabic words and the calligraphic letters conjoin to form an abstract,
lacy orb.
The BlueBra Girl is based on a terrible occurrence that happened in Tahrir Square in 2011 during a
political demonstration: the Egyptian military beat a women senseless, dragging her on the ground
and exposing her blue bra. She has become somewhat of an iconic hero for her bravery.
The sculpture The Heart is made of red painted stainless steel where lines are intertwined as veins.
The Blue Bra Girls is a powerful response to the current social upheaval in Egypt. Racked by
months of violent protest and the eventual collapse of the Mubarak government, Egypt’s women
came to place a significant role in advocating for change, often risking physical violence. One such
activist was filmed being beaten and stripped of her clothes leaving her blue bra exposed--‐footage
that shocked the world. Amer wanted to make a work that honored this women’s bravery. Ghada
Amer embodies an artistic practice characterized by cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary dialogue.
Her newest sculptural work is in keeping with this philosophy exploring themes of politics and
sexuality, alongside formal concerns. Embracing both the body and language as twin avenues to
explore the human condition, her work is at once playful, erotic and poetic. The sculptures mix all of
these qualities in powerful works that can be experienced by a viewer in two dimensions and three.
In many ways Amer’s mastery of the line in her paintings has informed her new sculptures. In works
such as The Blue Bra Girls, the viewer’s eyes trace the content of the object continuously, a
restlessness that gives the work tremendous power. The artist began this series with the sculpture
100 Words of Love wanting to “make a hollow sculpture where shadow is as important as the object”
(email correspondence with the artist). This desire to conflate inside and outside, private and public
frames Amer’s strong interest in social relationships and the way culture and popular imagery
governs social norms.
Essay written by Nick Herman.
JOHN ARMLEDER (Suisse) / sculpture
Born in Geneva in 1948, where he lives and works.
Armleder frequently examines the context in which art is displayed and views the exhibition as a
medium in its own right. Since the 1990s, he has created installations, paintings, wall paintings,
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sculptures and what he calls Furniture Sculptures --‐ installations which usually juxtapose furniture
with monochrome or abstract paintings, either literally on the furniture or on a canvas hanging
nearby. He often uses a dense scenographic hanging style, putting individual works into close
proximity and creating installation--‐like exhibitions. When an art lover looks at the painting, it's the
same thing as when a surfer looks at the surfboard," says Armleder, "They're recognized as
emblems of specific cultures. Someone who is innocent and free of those burdens would construct
his own interpretation of what is happening in that moment". OPAR features seven surfboards with
glittering, immaterial surfaces, hung on the wall, like pieces of sculpture or furniture, recalling his
previous similar works, as the surfs handmade by a Californian artisan. There is a contradiction
between their glittering and optical surface and their formal, minimalist display in line.
MAJA BAJEVIĆ, (Bosnia and Herzegovina) / video installation
Born in 1967 in Sarajevo. Lives and works in Sarajevo and Paris.
In her performances, videos, installations and photographs, Maja ������� confronts privacy with the
public as well as the personal with the political. Her personal view on phenomena of global world
becomes the epicenter of public discussions about truth, identity and homeland. Subjects such as
the abuse of power or religion are as central and common to her work as migration, marginalization
of the foreign and the tension between the local and the global
April mixes documentary and memory; fiction and friction; reality and the banality of a road movie
that takes us through the interior and exterior landscapes and battlefields the artist has lived in. The
interior world of the artist, organised following the ABCD (A is for Abyss) is interrupted by poems of
Vasko Popa from the cycle “Games” and passer by’s reading texts from philosophy to daily
newspapers. The ‘readers’ are people met on the road who have no emotional or intellectual
involvement in the subject, the estrangement is shown in this absence of emotions and involvement
while the ‘readers’ stumble innocently over difficult words and touch on questions of understanding
and failure -and hope- of our times.
(Maja Bajević)
BILL BALASKAS (Greece/Thessaloniki) / installation
Born in Thessaloniki. Lives and works in London.
Bill’s videos and installations have participated in more than 50 exhibitions and festivals around the
world. Venues where his work has been exhibited include Musιe des Abattoirs, Toulouse;
Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki; British Film Institute, London; BolteLang
Gallery, Zurich; A Foundation (Liverpool, UK). Furthermore, he is an awarded writer (British Council
of Greece, 2005) and screenwriter (Worldfest Houston International Film Festival, 2006).
This proposal for an online work aspires to address the immediacy and the urgency that
accompanies the conceptual framework set by “Everywhere But Now”. The omnipotence of the
location (i.e. m“Everywhere”) is perfectly embodied in the reach of the World Wide Web. And time
(i.e. “Now”) is reflected in the fact that the flashing phrase of the website (“THIS IS NEVER GOING
TO END”) is functional at this very moment and in the time to come: potentially, forever. The simple
question that is posed in the website’s address (“Is this ever going to end?’), inevitably, becomes a
referent of the nature of new media technologies, which have defined the revolutions at the south
coast of the Mediterranean (Africa and the Middle East) as well as the political upheaval caused by
the economic crisis at its north coast (Europe). Both the question and the answer featured in the
website’s address and main body appear to be ambivalent. Thus, on the one hand, they refer to the
constant suffering and turmoil for the peoples of the Mediterranean. Yet, on the other hand, they
also invite the viewer to question this determinism; and they allude to the fact that there IS
potentiality, there IS time for change and this time might, actually, be NOW.
(Bill Balaskas)
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LENORA DE BARROS (Brazil) / video
Born in 1953 in Sao Paulo, where she lives and works.
Lenora de Barros is one of the major figures of Brazilian contemporary art. Having lived through the
difficult period of the Brazilian dictatorship, her art lies within the context of aesthetic radicalization
and existential experimentation. Her work is based on the legacy of Brazilian “visual poems” and the
concrete poetry of the 1950s. Her art has developed through the use of different media: video,
graphic design, performance, photography, object construction and installation.
Study for stubs explores the limits between photography and video, using a knife that tears and
invades the photo, from inside out, through the mouth of the artist. The picture is strong and violent,
although the appearance of this violence takes place in a gradual way, revealing a lyricism that
makes the work closer to a spectacle of challenge rather than a discourse on self-sacrifice.
Moreover, despite the sound of the knife invading the image, Lenora de Barros
prepares schemes of silence and drama which are accentuated by the choice of producing the video
in black and white. The dichotomies presented (silence/sound, smoothness/violence, moving
image/photography) reveal one of the greatest qualities of her work: the size of an original visual
poem. (text by Felipe Scovino)
NIGOL BEZJIAN (Syria) / video projection
Born in Aleppo, Syria, 1955. Lives and works in Beirut.
Completed his high school education in Boston and his BFA in Cinema in NYC, he made many
films, among them Chickpeas, Muron, Roads Full of Apricots, Home/Land, I Left My Shoes in
Istanbul and Milk, Carnation & Godly Song. He won many awards including a Golden Panda,
Golden Eagle and his films have shown in many international film festivals.
Daniel Varoujan was an Armenian poet born in the Village of Perknik presently in Turkey.
He was brutally killed in the 1915 Armenian Genocide committed by the Young Turks government.
He was only 31 years of age. The original film is 175 minutes long. In this excerpt Marc Nichanian
speaks about Daniel Varoujan as the Poet/Mourner.
MOHAMED BOUROUISSA (Algeria/France) / video projection
Born in 1978 in Blida (Algeria). Lives and works in Paris.
Primarily working around representations of a contemporary urban environment, Bourouissa is
interested in geographical and social spaces usually represented by stereotypes. He reformulates
the stereotypes into compositions of a great formal rigor, qualified as “emotional geometry” by fellow
artist Florence Paradιis. He thus creates images where the strangeness and built up tension prevail,
as an alternative to the dominant trend.
Entitled All--‐ in – a title borrowed from a video created as part of Nuit Blanche (a Parisian art
festival) for the Paris Mint, filmed in the reception rooms of its Quai Conti headquarters in Paris and
the factory at Pessac where euro coins are minted. Put together in the style of a music video, the
work is accompanied by the song Foetus by Booba, one of the key figures in French rap. Its tempo
is also dictated by the different stages of the making of a coin bearing the rapper’s effigy, and
finishes with the coins being poured onto the detritus of a party. The video, a one--‐off collaboration
between the institution and one of the faces of urban counter--‐culture, refers, according to
Mohamed Bourouissa’s own terms, to a ‘liberal anarchism’, where individual success is measured
by money, in a paradigm of western societies. Mohamed Bourouissa does not pretend to deal with
the immense and complex network that binds us to money. First and foremost, he seeks to
emphasise its attractiveness and its power as a motor and model of integration and success, but
also, in a significant dichotomy, the force and violence of its capacity to exclude. Managing to avoid
the pitfalls of the moral disapproval that often accompany this taboo subject, he has drawn up a host
of situations that leave us with the sense that something much wider is being expressed.
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MARIE BOVO (Spain) / photos
Born in 1967 Spain. She lives and works in Marseille.
Marie Bovo works on video image and photographic image. Time is a key element of many of her
works, suggesting more metaphorical temporalities which recall the universal cycles of the living.
Her work is deeply rooted in reality. It brings into play geopolitical and social issues, especially in the
way she considers the city. During the spring of 2006, Marie Bovo installed her camera on the
rooftop of an apartment block in Cairo’s Bab-El-Louk neighbourhood, in the heart of the Egyptian
capital. With it, she took ten photographs, at different times of the day and night. In each one, the
framing and viewpoint are roughly the same: apartment blocks seem to be piled on top of each
other, and there is no horizon in
sight, leading us to believe that the city might stretch out forever. Each image shows us a different
landscape consisting of the same rubblecovered flat roofs, and buildings that might be in ruins,
ormerely in the process of being built. Below them, the same anarchic labyrinth of streets unravels.
However, the sun’s trajectory and the variable intensity of the urban lightscape throws fluctuating
shadows that sculpturally remodel the neighbourhood, giving it an infinite number of facets. With the
Egyptian series Bab-El-Louk, Marie Bovo examines the world from on high, as when, a few years
previously, she photographed a nocturnal Tokyo from the Mori Tower. But she also freezes and
splits up portions of time, of continuance. This is reminiscent of her photos of Marseille beaches,
where the waves, captured in the interval separating the opening and closing of the shutter, never
stop rolling. In the same vein, Bab--‐ El--‐ Louk uses circular time: everything will start over again
tomorrow, because the earth is round, and these ten images – photographs of a non--‐event –
compel us very simply to contemplate a universal time, which, while placing all humans on an equal
footing, does not exhaust them with the rhythm of its repetitions.
CLAIRE FONTAINE (France) / video projection
Claire Fontaine is a Paris-based collective artist, founded in 2004.
After lifting the name from a popular brand of school notebooks, Claire Fontaine declared as a
"readymade artist" and began to elaborate a version of neo--‐conceptual art that often looks like
other people's work. Working in neon, video, sculpture, painting and text, Claire Fontaine practice
can be described as an ongoing interrogation of the political impotence and the crisis of singularity
that seem to define contemporary art today. Claire Fontaine uses freshness and youth to make a
whatever--‐singularity and an existential terrorist in search of subjective emancipation. Grows up
among the ruins of the notion of authorship, experimenting with collective protocols of production,
dιtournements, and the production of various devices for the sharing of intellectual and private
property.
P.I.G.S is the video about the burning of the shapes of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain
reconstituted with match sticks --‐ illustrates the metaphor of the destruction of the first countries that
defaulted in the euro zone, this fire that could be the one of a revolution, represents at the present
time just the destructive violence of the crisis.
No Present is a detournement of the punk slogan No Future, it refers to the economical and
historical conjuncture that sees many countries and their inhabitants deprived of not only a future but
also the possibility of a daily life that isn't just survival. Once the debt caused by the greed of a few
people burdens entire populations obliterating the minimal rights for millions of people like getting
married, leaving one's parents' house or hoping to get a job, it can legitimately be said that there is
no present like the sex pistols used to sing "No Future". The present is always something shared
and created collectively, a sum of solitudes creates an absence of the present.
JORDI COLOMER (Spain) / video installation
Born in Barcelona, in 1962. Lives and works in Paris and Barcelona.
Since 2002 the work of Colomer is mainly focused on the theme of journey: completed his period of
studio films With Le Dortoir (2001), he began the journey--‐works: Pθre Coco (2002), Anarchitekton
(2002--‐ 04), Arabian Stars (2006), travelling across France, Brazil, Romania, Japan and Yemen. In
2008 he created the project called En la pampa, in the Atacama desert in Chile. This work was
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presented for the first time on the occasion of the monographic exhibition dedicated to him by the
Jeu de Paume in Paris.
“It's easier getting gold out of men than from rivers”
(Bertolt Brecht, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, 1927--‐30)
The foundation of a city is not necessarily a heroic act. Everyday a new city begins to be built on
water, concrete, sweat and money. Some are almost a pure idea. There are glass cities that grow
out of offices and others made from tin and card that dance to the rhythm of their own inhabitants.
On one occasion, a group of outlaws were being tailed by the police when their truck broke down in
the middle of the desert. They couldn't keep going or turn back. So they ended up founding a
paradise city, the golden city, where the worst crime was not to have any money. That city was
called Mahagonny and Bertolt Brecht envisioned it at the time when Las Vegas came about shaping
the image of the city that we recognize today. In Prohibido cantar/No Singing a few characters make
a gambling den where they offer entertainment games, tricks, love and food at low prices. The
action takes place close to a dusty road, on the same plot of land and during the time in which a
great private city was planned, with 32 casinos, called Gran Escala, which was to attract 25 million
visitors, and yet never saw the light of day. These images reveal how the city of Eurofarlete thrives,
under a blazing sun and strong blowing winds. Fragments of what passed there over two days may
help to discern the particular form of organization needed for survival, where everything is on sale at
a bargain price or indeed at any price.
MARTA DELL’ANGELO (Italy) / painting
Born in 1970 in Pavia.Lives and works in Milan.
In the work of Marta Dell'Angelo, monumental female bodies represented in moments of intimacy
are are recurrent; they are emphasized by the white backgrounds, with positions often broken down
and without grace. The body represents nothing but itself, focused on the forms and their physical
presence that is both a representation of an existential state. The starting point of her work is digital
photography reworked and reassembled by the computer. Painting is the final action of a path that
sometimes stops before the stadium of the pictorial work, materializing in audio, video and low--‐
resolution printing on paper towels or tissues. This implementation phase of the process is
characterized by the disintegration of the pixels transformed into an expressive element. Painting
In La Prua (The Prow) we see a group of human bodies overlapping each other, but unlike those
featured in the Raft by Gιricault, they do not try to escape their tragic fate. In Gericault’s painting, the
men and women are at the mercy of an unleashed nature, they support each other in order to save
themselves from the drifting they are bound to.
In La Prua the characters are apparently on vacation, indifferent to each other. Usual and normal
gestures, apparently meaningless. Nobody does anything special: they stretch, look around, tighten
their skirt, take off a sock, remain still, bite a sandwich while gesturing or pointing something, they
look back, bend, remain seated, shake or push. Somehow they are all absent. Their claustrophobic
individuality, so futile and exasperated, forbids any emotion, any compassion. We can see only the
quiet and impossible desire to escape their own destiny...
DESERTMED COLLECTIVE (Italy/Germany/Greece) / video installation
Giulia Di Lenarda, lives in Milan, photographer and researcher. Giuseppe Ielasi, lives in Vimercate,
musician. Co--‐curator of Senufo Editions. Armin Linke, lives in Berlin, artist, works with
photography, video, and various media; professor for photography at the HfG Karlsruhe. Amedeo
Martegani , lives in Milano, artist, works with various media. Giovanna Silva, lives in Milano,
architect, photo--‐ grapher, artist. Co--‐founder of the magazine San Rocco. Renato Rinaldi, lives in
Cividale, musician, works with soundtracks for theatre and radio dramas
Collaborations: Daniele Ansidei, Aristide Antonas, Elina Axioti, Giulia Bruno, Angelo Boriolo, Antonia
Dika, Laura Fiorio, Stefano Graziani and Franck Leibovici.
Desertmed is a project about desert islands of the Mediterranean. Desertmed is an interdisciplinary
research project. The “blind spots” on the European map serve as its subject matter: approximately
300 uninhabited islands in the Mediterranean Sea. A group of artists, architects, writers and
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theoreticians travelled to almost forty of the ������ difficult to ������� islands in search of clues,
impartially cataloguing information that can be interpreted in multiple ways. The result is a pool of
photographs, audio and video recordings, presented along with further artistic contributions. They
examine the myriad ways in which the individual islands are used and --‐ accordingly --‐ their
significant political, economic, and historical interrelationships.
INCI EVINER (Turkey) / video projection
Born in Ankara in 1956. Lives and works in Istanbul.
Using various techniques like drawings, photography and video, Inci Eviner forms a tension
between the space and performing bodies. This tension operates as an artistic approach
revealing what is suppressed and breaking the codes. Her video works performing the uncanny on
the stage of reason, deal with issues of identity; in particular female identity through social, cultural,
historical or political perspectives.
For Fluxes of Girls on Europe, Eviner utilizes the European map as space for the work: “…I am
investigating how space shapes our lives with its memory and structure. As an extension of the
body, space interests me. I am trying to discover how power operates on our bodies and changes
them. Therefore, I prefer moving images and pursue this question; could this state become a new
opportunity for resistance? By destroying the codes of already existing spaces, I am providing a
space for ‘existence’. I am not creating an abstracted space or image. I am working with given
spaces because those spaces are living spaces shaped by a certain school of thought. You see,
that rational thought is standing against what I consider irrational and subconscious!”. The work
searches for a new position for the other while it tries to create a realm of existence for the
individual between the law and violence. For Eviner, Europe is an ‘idea’ that we have to confront
with since it produces discourses and representations, makes definitions and judgments. At the
same time, this is the result of an inevitable argument for our own identity. In Girls in Europe, the
European continent is invaded by girls from North Africa, unknown corners of the world and
Anatolia, who ridicule borders, challenge and demand living spaces. As in Harem, in this fiction,
Eviner takes up the comeback of the suppressed and the freedom of expression she allows to each
girl, sometimes as the expression of violence and sometimes of joy.
YMANE FAKHIR (Morocco/France) / photos
Born in 1969 in Casablanca. Lives and works in Marseille.
Ymane Fakhir photographs Maghrebi women in pictures in contrast with the typical clichιs of the
woman--‐object, the submitted woman as seen by the Western media. Ymane Fakhir's practice of
photography is one that merges documentary processes and fictional
ventures. Her work is inscribed in an extensible territory, building bridges between France and the
Mediterranean area, and particularly with her native Morocco. Her approach to video in 2011 is a
natural consequence of this documentary process.
The series Un Ange Passe tells the story of a Morrocan wedding, depicting a world of colours and
reflecting an imaginary universe in which both the married couple and the guests become actors. It
is all about comestics and theatrics, seduction and parade. As the bride walks to and fro, each time
with a different gown on, with different make--‐up and accessories, the guests stop eating or talking
to gaze at the show. The orchestra’s music fills the room as the guests applause and scrutinize the
married couple on their way to the elevated couch where they are to be exposed to the eyes of all
present. They smile faintly and nod their heads as the negafats , professional maids who specialise
in nuptial decorum, and constantly readjust their clothes, tell them how to sit and stand and even
how to properly hold each other’s hand. The negafats monitor eveything the married couple do. This
is the most important day in the life of a young arab woman. Each of them has been raised in the
cult of marriage asthe apex of existence. On her wedding day, she is both a queen and an object
part of a family show.
PARASTOU FOROUHAR (Iran/Germany) / wall drawing
Born in 1962 in Teheran. Since 1991 based in Germany.
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Parastou Forouhar reflects critically on the mechanisms at work in exhibitions and constructs of the
Other: when works by an Iranian artist are shown, then certain expectations are instantly raised. The
chador and the veil, beard and turban are signs of visual representation of the “Arabic” – the mass
media shows us these images day in, day out. Her work primarily focuses on the political context of
Iran and, at the same time, demands a reflection on the alternating interplay between what is
intrinsically one’s own and the foreign Other, between tradition and modernity, as well as categories
such as male and female. Forouhar employs veils, Oriental ornaments and Persian characters and
translates these elements into the “white cube” of the museums or covers the museum walls with
torture scenes.
The Persian script is turned into an ornament. Covering the white walls of the museums, the
characters serve Forouhar as “paper” for her own text. The room becomes a “writing room”.
Whereas the white walls of the gallery room are raised to a universal norm and an unmarked
instance, the Oriental ornament stands for difference or the deviating. The writing is also strange, if
not alien, because it is illegible for Western visitors – as an “incomprehensible” text it becomes a
pure ornament. In defying attempts by Western visitors to assign it meaning, the script remains
locked into its irreducible pictorial graphicness and indissoluble representation. Even if one has a
command of Persian, the characters prove to be nothing more than word fragments and syllables,
which are not subject to a linear order. The script ornamentation covers the whole room – the
ceiling, the floor, and the walls. Viewers entering the rooms are surrounded by patterns, forcing
them to give up their sovereign, distanced standpoint.
(Parastou Forouhar)
APOSTOLOS GEORGIOU (Greece/Thessaloniki) / painting
Born in Thessaloniki in 1952. Lives and works in in Athens and Skopelos.
Between 1971--‐73 he studied architecture at Hochschule fόr Angewandte Kunst in Vienna and then
painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence (1973--‐75). He stayed in Italy (Milan--‐Venice)
until 1980 and then he returned to Greece (Athens--‐Skopelos) where he works and lives ever since.
The paintings of Apostolos Georgiou are anthropocentric and narrative, and draw his subjects from
everyday people. Interpersonal relationships, personal anxieties and deadlocks are rendered with
subtle humor, sarcasm and tenderness, highlighting the existential nature of his work and his basic
reflection on identity, sex and human relationships.
KHALED JARRAR (Palestine) / video installation
Born in 1976 in Jenine. Lives and works in Ramallah.
Soldier, 2010, video on floor, 4 min., silent
Jarrar completed his studies in Interior design at the Palestine Polytechnic University in 1996, and
then entered the field of photography in 2004. In 2011 he graduated as visual artist from the
International Academy of Art --‐ Palestine. His first exhibition took place in public space at the
checkpoints of Howarra and Qalandya. Jarrar works with photography, video and performance. His
work has been recently exhibited at the Sharjah Biennal (2013); at the Barbican Centre, London and
the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2012); at the Biennale of the Mediterranean, MACRO
Museum, Rome in 2011.
Before I start working on this project I start rethinks the political and ethical status of me as a soldier
and as a photographer. In the photography there must be thought of and understood inseparable
between me and them argues the relationship of photography between the photographer “the
Officer” and the soldiers and the powers that govern. […] As a soldier using the camera my work
provides a context that well explore the power of image and create a conceptual framework for a
dialogue between us, this dialogue well add no more photos but well add more soldiers. Free from
the militaristic perspective, or any other essential conception of the collective of governed
individuals, the soldier’s identity comes to resemble the photographic relation. Photographs bear
traces of a plurality of political relationship that might be actualized by the act of watching,
transforming and disseminating what is seen into claims that demand action. Photography is the
result of an encounter with another and with other. In this encounter, one is holding a camera, while
15
the other, knowingly or not, becomes the photographed or filmed soldier. An image, or aspects of
that soldier are inscribed within the film, and to some extent this act, this encounter inescapably
involve a level of violence, even when the situation is with full consent of the soldiers. This
encounter between me as an officer and the soldiers who been photographed by me seems for me
as a moment to possess the means of production, from the other hand there another setup where
another soldiers is filming the whole proses documenting without having nay knowledge why he is
doing this in the end I am the one who had the access to control them and to ask them to been
photographer but they where saluting me as an officer and I was saluting them as a soldier. […] The
relation between photographer “soldier” and the photographed “soldier”, is militarise and couldn’t
succeed to had another relation with a new soldiers in there graduation where they became soldiers
so there responsibility now is to be soldiers and keeping there new identity so its not a traditional
senses that allows them to approach there new ways.
(Khaled Jarrar)
ISEULT LABOTE (Switzerland) / photos
Born in 1959 in Geneva from a family of Greek origin. Lives and works in Geneva and Berlin.
Iseult Labote stands for the glorification of industrial production and of the people behind the
machines, utensils and materials whose use is at the origin of industrial creation. Her use of extreme
close--‐up to produce photographic tableaux isolates the object from its primary nature, revealing a
more striking aestheticism and resulting in a new and more intimate reality. In the end her work not
only expresses what has existed, but offers a visual rhetoric in which objects and matter, shapes
and colours, situation in space and serendipity produce multiple material, emotional and conceptual
realities.
The Thrace, in Nord--‐est Greece, was the place of Tobacco and had contributed to the growth of
the economic system in Greece. 1st Producer. This special plant from the new world, was spread
quickly in European courts. It was first farmed in Greece, in Thessaloniki, by french merchants in the
end of 16th century. In the end of the next century its cultivation was generalized in the whole
Ottoman empire, the Balkans, Macedonia, Thrace, Asia Minor. The Tobacco crises had widespread
damage after the Balkan wars, in the beginning of the XX century. More than half of the population
constituted the Tobacco workforce. At that time, the « Pomaks » came in Greece from Bulgary and
received the greek nationality. They are the musulman greek minority, who produce until today the
Basma, high quality of Tobacco. They live poorly,marginalized, in the mountains, in the boarder of
the Bulgary. The photografies of my « Serie 1492 » are done in the mountains of Thrace at the
Pomaks’houses, and in several abandonned factories of Tobacco in Xanthi. Packages of tobacco
ready to travel, but no faces, no employees anymore into this famous factories. For many centuries
it was the place of important economic exchanges.
(Iseult Labote)
LOS CARPINTEROS (Cuba) / photos
Marco Antonio Castillo Valdιs, born in Camagόey (Cuba) in 1971. Dagoberto Rodriguez Sanchez,
born in Caibariιn, Las Villas (Cuba) in 1969. They live and work in Madrid and La Havana.
The Los Carpinteros collective (The Carpenters) has created some of the most important works to
come out of Cuba in recent decades. Formed in 1991, the collective decided to abandon the notion
of individual authorship and, instead, to connect with the older tradition of artisans and skilled
workers. Interested in the crossover between art and society, the group merges architecture, design
and sculpture in an unexpected and often humorous way.
DEANNA MAGANIAS (Greece) / sculpture
Born in 1967. Lives and works in Athens and Tuscany.
The divergence between objective reality and the subjective experience of that reality defines the
main terrain in which the work of DeAnna Maganias operates. Frequent subjects in her work are the
standard environments of contemporary travel – airports and airplanes – and intimate domestic
16
spaces – the tiled or plaster surfaces of bathroom or bedroom floors, walls or ceilings. By focusing
on details of such places and representing them with painstaking accuracy she reveals how the
familiar can become abstract. In formal terms such abstraction maintains a dialogue with the
practices of minimal art.Sculpture
In the ancient Greek world Pendelic marble was considered to be the finest for its purity and glowing
white colour. The world renowned marble was used in the construction of many important buildings
including the Parthenon and sculptures of the golden age. The ancient quarry of Pendeli was
officially closed in the 1970s, but before that Pendelic marble was used for sinks, flooring,
bathrooms, kitchen counters and other architectural details during the vast urban building boom of
Athens of the 50's--‐70's. Now, though the extraction of Pendlic marble is unlawful, the marble
known as "Dionisiou" is quarried from another side of the same mountain and is used for all types of
construction and objects. The work, ΠΕΝΤΕΛΗ, uses pieces from the vast discarded marble waste
found outside of Athens --‐ from various small industries for stone in Attica, bits and pieces of sinks,
kitchen counters and other mundane objects and rubble form the letters of the name. The marble is
piled on the ground in the formation of the letters and each letter is 150x100x40 cm The sculpture is
about waste and destroyed landscape--‐ literally and as metaphor for values that have been
exchanged in the interest of the building industry's throw--‐away mentality that feeds consumer
instant gratification and the urban reality that has resulted. (DeAnna Maganias)
MARCELLO MALOBERTI (Italy) / performance
Born in Codogno, Lodi in 1966. Lives and works in Milan.
Marcello Maloberti observes people, searching for beauty within diversity. He finds it in the
agricultural world from where he comes, in the typical, almost archaic, faces of elderly people and
teenagers. He also finds beauty in other recesses of society: images of endangered worlds mingle
with representations of emerging ones. Although, on one hand, the artist cultivates nostalgia, on the
other he produces a reading of socio--‐anthropological changes through the transfiguration of reality
in poetic representation. I often realize colorful artworks that can be worn by people like street
sellers or nomad--‐street theatre happy inhabitant of a urban space. These living sculptures become
part of a performance--‐parade trough the streets. This life interaction and the connection with local
people and inhabitant is very important in my research, my whole oeuvre can be seen as a pure
enjoinment of life and humanity.
CIRCUS has the same name of a series or performances I did in different peripheries of Italy. In the
performances I create a temporary dance floor using everyday objects like cars, hundreds of small
mirrors and colourful strings. The lights refractions, and the playful atmosphere engage also the
surrounding architectures and passing--‐by people. Circus is based on inhabitant interaction and
developed with the contribution of local energies. It’s part of the tour that started in and France, to go
around in Europe. The performance will happen in one evening around a temporary architecture
made of two hundred hand mirrors in colorful plastic frames, hanging at different heights from a big
tent. There will be also four cars, they will light up the installation with their headlamps. The wind
and the air will let the mirrors swing and reflect the surrounding reality; varied light games will come
out from the darkness. In the installation I will also include a dj--‐set that will bring up a merry
atmosphere, turn the installation into an open air dance floor where the public is free to have a good
time dancing. The music could be chosen and mixed by some local young dj.
(Marcello Maloberti)
MILTOS MANETAS (Greece) / painting
Born in Athens (1964). He lives between Rome and New York.
Miltos Manetas is a Greek--‐born artist and theorist whose work explores the representation and the
aesthetics of the information society. Manetas is the Founder of the Art Movement Neen, a pioneer
of Machinima and an instigator of Internet Art. In 2009 he started the Internet Pavilion of the Venice
Biennial and from 2011 he directs the MACROeo (electronicOrphanage at the MACRO Musem in
Rome). Manetas's work--‐ according to Lev Manovich--‐ can be placed within a well--‐established
tradition in modern painting (representing modern people in their particular modern settings).
Painting That's what Greeks know today: "what they are NOT, what they DON'T want to be". That's
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what they say, sometimes even with stones and with the violence of broken marbles. "We are not,
we don't want to become"-say the Greeks- "perfect Northerners". A new Middle South is born: its
now visibly transforming Greece and less visibly, the rest of the Mediterranean Europe and the
Middle East. Its arrival -like that of anything newborn - brought Crisis but also Hope. Crisis is mostly
economic: Middle Sud welcomes the crisis of its Economy! Hope is cultural: that's now our new job.
(Miltos Manetas, 2012)
LILIANA MORO (Italy) / sculpture
Born in 1961 in Milan, where she lives and works.
Liliana Moro’s work consists of metaphors highlighting the nuances of the individual and social body.
She looks at alternative worlds, finding in them a means of expression through their physical,
material and sensory qualities. Through their clearly visible attributes, her installations speak to the
viewer in a paradoxically straightforward way. The position of the viewer constantly oscillates
between witness and participant.
Underdog stages a battle. Bronze sculptures of five fighting dogs in different positions and roles are
arranged in the exhibition space. One is keeping watch with tightened muscles; two others fight; one
whines triumphantly; while yet another yields inert on the ground. The group seems to answer to
three imperatives: “Look alert!”, “Attack!”, “Win!”. Beyond the title, the elation of the winner rather
than the commemoration and grief for the loser in emphasized. There is an initial pause, but there
are clear invitations to conflict and competition. In this case as well, the ego is aggressive, and it
needs to assert itself with its teeth and nails. There is indeed a loser but its presence seems
inevitable. Why does contact have to become a clash that establishes a loser and a winner? No
emotion is stirred in the group of dogs; it seems like the saying “Mors tua vita mea!” is being exalted.
These strong dogs with brawny and smooth muscles are famished and worked--‐up so as to express
and assert their own aggressiveness and supremacy (the material with which they are made
displays cold composure and iciness). But here a battle for survival – both of groups and single
individuals – is also staged. Liliana Moro uses an ancient mode of expression and by means of this
bestiary she represents not the sociality of the pack, but the tyranny and the rivalry between adult
males when aggressiveness is never enough to justify itself – either on a biological or existential
level. In any event, the sculptures may also be seen as five “stages” in the life of a single animal: a
sort of a tautological battle against oneself when one is both loser and winner: every figure is both
prey and preadator, which is an aspect that involves the cycle of life. In this case then, Moro gives
dignity back to the loser, showing the ups and downs of his life, allowing him to leave himself in
order to objectively consider his own actions.
(Milo van Farronato)
MARIA PAPADIMITRIOU (Greece) / sculpture
Born in Athens in 1957. Lives and works in Volos and Athens.
Maria Papadimitriou’s previous works revolve around the notions of parody, paradox and personal
identity. She teaches at the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly, and she is the
founder of the non profit association T.A.M.A. (Temporary Autonomous Museum for All) in Greece.
She won the Deste Foundation Prize in 2003. The Mediterranean basin has always been an area
where major routes of migration converge.. These journeys consist primarily of clandestine
crossings, where the notion of “invisibility” operates both as a
physical requisite and a political conditioning. Maria Papadimitriou explores the theme of
undocumented travellers and refugees compelled to these forms of obscurity and concealment
[…]The Murano glass vases, shining, transparent and solid embody the seat of the travellers’
intellectual and emotional power. The inimitability of each piece in its varying shapes corresponds to
a single entity transformed and altered by personal stories, thus invaluable, as it is irreplaceable.
Broken shards mark the brittleness of this material presenting Papadimitriou’s sea as a solid
patchwork of lost histories
[….]. (Maria Halkias)
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DAN & LIA PERJOVSCHI (Romania) / installation /wall drawing
Born in 1961 in Sibiu (Romania). Lives and works in Bucharest.
Dan Perjovschi uses cartoons and comic illustration to comment on and satirize current social and
political issues. His works vary in form from low budget photocopied pamphlets for high circulation to
large scale installations. Perjovski has transformed the medium of drawing, using it to create an
object, a performance, and an installation. In the last decade, Perjovschi has made his drawings
spontaneously in museum spaces, allowing global and local affairs to inform the final result.
IVAN PETROVIĆ Serbia) / photos
Born in 1973 in Kruševac (Serbia). Lives and works in Belgrade.
Ivan Petrović photographic work feature a distinctive documentary approach, which also includes an
extended use of ready made material (photographs developed from films and slides found in the
streets). By reusing his previous work and relating it to his new work, he presents his photographic
projects as a self--‐curated form. Researching of the interpretation of photographs as documents as
well as the established criteria for evaluating a particular photo--‐document in certain circumstances
is core, irrespective of the current central subject.
Work under the title Exemplary Photographs occurs on 2013 as process of selection of
photographs which I took in period between 2007 and 2011. The photographs represent
shoots of suburbs of Belgrade and smaller cities in Serbia, also including sights and details
of cities environments that are more similar of nonurban areas of suburbia or uninhabited
places. By generic nature of its occurrence this work could be observed as a form of self
curatorial realization, but above all, taking into consideration the photographs as individual
units as reference values that now building up give content, not on actual socio--‐political
events, but on unpredictable consequences of a particular processes of changes that could
to implicate; as metaphors about saturated everyday of socio--‐political processes and of the
age in which we live that more resembles as state, even that looks like an paradox, than to
be described trough happenings.
(Ivan Petrović)
KHALIL RABAH (Palestine) / painting
Born in Jerusalem in 1961. Lives and works between London, New York and Ramallah.
Khalil Rabah's Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind (2003–ongoing) is an elusive
national museum that was established, in the words of its newsletter, "to inspire wonder, encourage
discovery, and promote knowledge." With departments spanning fields such as botany, geology, and
paleontology, the Museum through its newsletter assumes a cheerful naturalism as it describes
botanical research encountering territorial obstacles in the field, or considers the legal rights of trees
and other natural objects. As a playful reading of the political reality of Palestine that also implicates
the blissfully remote framing mechanisms of the natural history museum, we encounter a complex
geological and geopolitical wink when its Earth and Solar System Department announces its
fascination with how our world is "constantly being remolded by powerful forces beyond our control."
Art Exhibition is a collection of paintings based on fifty photographs that span exhibitions of
Palestinian art that took place in different locations around the world from 1954 to the present. The
installation is based on archival research, and explores questions around modern and contemporary
Palestinian art, its figures and protagonists, platforms, and documentation.The work seeks to create
a subjective historical re--‐mapping of exhibition--‐making practices using photographs and images,
press clippings and documents, which have been translated into photorealist paintings. Art
Exhibition is organized according to the following categories: action paintings, date paintings,
dialogue paintings, dot paintings, exhibition paintings, framed paintings, landscape paintings,
monotheistic paintings, mystery paintings, photography paintings, portrait paintings, silen paintings,
temperature paintings, text paintings.
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PHILIP RANTZER (Israel) / installation
Born in 1956 in Polylesht (Romania). Lives and works in Tel--‐Aviv.
Rantzer is one of the giants of contemporary Israeli art. His work in sculpture, assemblage, mobiles,
mixed media and drawing using found objects are zany, sardonic and magical. Never forgetting his
childhood in an Israeli transit camp, he uses found materials to create dada and surreal
masterpieces.. Rantzer's works deal idiosyncratically with larger themes of civic justice, class
warfare, and environmental destruction. But the objects themselves never lose a sense of childhood
wonder and fascination blending horror and humor to jolt the viewer's thought processes.
The work Europe is part of the first project is "the five continents". This work was exhibit at the
LACMA in Los Angeles in 2006. Each sculpture represents a continent (as a fiction) and on different
parts of each of them there were five questions relating the situation that the sculptors describe. The
questions were also written on the wooden wall that surrounds the sculpture stage. The audience
was asked to answer them by writing on the wall (graffiti).
VERONICA SMIRNOFF (Russia/UK)
Born in Moscow in 1979. Lives and works in London and Moscow.
Veronica Smirnoff has brought from her Russia nostalgic images of snow, of izbas, of animals, of
icons. But in her delicate paintings, mostly tempera on plaster, there is also the sweet memory of
her childhood and adolescence, which finds expression in the faces of her grandfather, the little girls
and the other human figures that, molded by her imagination, resurface from the past. It is as if time
flowed gracefully out of the tubes of paint to be fixed or its perfumes were released from the bottle of
memory in which it had been imprisoned. Transplanted into a new land, into a universe of
continually revived differences, expatriates tend to mimic their lost homeland, to reproduce the
places they have left behind, to continue to think in their own tongue and to imagine according to the
canons of their own figurative tradition. Redolent of Greek Icons and pre--‐renaissance paintings, the
work is constructed with traditional elements--‐gesso and pigment ground from semi--‐precious
stones, mixed with egg yoke and white wine to make the paints. The wooden boards I paint on are
made of oak in Russian monasteries and blessed. This undoubtedly lends the work a religious
undertone but at the same time heightens the focus on this conjunction of the old and new, familiar
and peculiar. I am fascinated by the construction of the iconic, the “Icon” as the object of worship
and its relationship to “popular art” with a wide repertoire of signs: the flat moulding of figures,
schematic linearity and cut--‐out two dimensional quality, the abstract effects of colour, flatness and
tilted depth.
PRISCILLA TEA (Italy) / painting
Born in 1983 in Milan, where she lives and works.
Priscilla Tea works mainly with painting and digital projections. Her large scale canvases are often a
collision between digital gestures and painterly gestures, but generally speaking, her concern is with
the idea of painting--‐ after--‐internet. Tea's paintings often depict landscapes, though you are not
always sure what you are looking at. If you stared long at a screen image without blinking and then
closed your eyes, what you would see for an instant, the memory of the image you were looking at,
is somehow close to the subject matter of what Priscilla Tea seems to be capturing. Paintings that
embed half--‐erased memories of images on canvas with thick layer upon thick layer of paint.
Abstract landscapes of thoughts and negation, these paintings appear as traffic signs from our
subconscious image stream.m The paintings of Priscilla Tea exist quietly in a space beyond the
screen, in a space that is just so much further away. They often depict landscapes, though you are
not always sure what you are looking at. If you stared long at a screen image without blinking and
then
closed your eyes, what you would see for an instant, the memory of the image you were looking at,
is somehow close to the subject matter of what Priscilla Tea seems to be capturing. Paintings that
embed half--‐erased memories of images on canvas with thick layer upon thick layer of paint.
Abstract landscapes of thoughts and negation, these paintings appear as traffic signs from our
subconscious image stream. Looking at the paintings in real life, the surface manifests an almost
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absurd insistence in the shape of these places, because these horizon lines and signs are painted
over and over so many times that the paint acquires a physical depht, the paint itself becomes a
place.
MARIA TSAKGARI (Greece) /sculpture/ installation
Born in Pereus in 1981. Lives and works in Athens.
She worked as a conservator at the National Gallery of Athens and in private collections. Later on
she studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts with Professor Anastasios Christakis and John
Kontarato. In 2007--‐2008 she won a scholarship from the IKY Foundation and studied for one year
at Facultad de Artes in Madrid. She graduated in 2010 with honors. She continued her studies
earning a Master of Fine Arts at the School of Fine Arts, graduating in 2012. She lives in Athens and
works as a teacher in the private sector and as an associate in the laboratory of Nikos Navridis at
the School of Fine Arts in Athens.
Thank you is a research into the world of faith, thanksgiving and offering. Through allusions to the
icons of votive offerings and the manual nature of the art--‐making process, a dialogue is established
with non--‐physical votive offerings and the forms of intellectual exercise that require discipline,
concentration and persistence, despite the ephemeral and intangible nature of such practices. The
practice of votive offering comes as evidence of man’s connection to the divine, as manifestation of
worship and miracles; it comes also as incontestable proof of a social drama which takes place and
leads the faithful to the act of pledging. This forms part of a small ritual with the possibility of
improvising and introducing a personal element. These practices give access to the sacred which is
associated with everything that turns psychosomatic experiences into a process of constantly
evolving creativity and rebirth. The Greek word for thanksgiving—efcharisto [which is where
Eucharist comes from]—means ‘to acknowledge and return a favour’. The act of thanksgiving
promotes the establishment of a semantic field involving memory, gratitude and thought. Heidegger
points out that any act of thanksgiving belongs in the realm of thought, since gratitude is mainly
addressed to the ultimate gift which is the essence of our Being, hence to thinking and reflection. In
this artwork ash was chosen exactly for its ephemeral nature and its ability to be reborn through
burning. Incineration symbolises death and ash stands for the ephemeral, the transience of human
life, the instinct of death and above all the fear before the ‘threat of going back to inorganic matter”.
The trace is the perpetual presence of absence, what is at once inscribed and deleted and becomes
the reference of any present element to any absent element; in short, it is the presence of the
other’s absence—the total absence of any presence of any absent element or, in other words, the
absence of absence, the oblivion of oblivion.
YIORGIS YEROLYMBOS (Greece) / photos
Born in Paris in 1973. Lives and works in Athens.
Photographer and architect. He studied photography at the Technological Institute of Athens and
architecture at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He subsequently pursued a graduate
degree at Goldsmith's College, University of London, and completed his Ph.D. at the School of Art
and Design of the University of Derby, UK. His photographic work has been published in a number
of books on landscape and architectural photography. In addition to his academic work, he exhibits
his work in solo and group art exhibitions in Greece and abroad. His work focuses on the interface of
nature and= culture as it can be exemplified in contemporary topography. He photographs
landscapes under transition, places that have sustained changes in the face of modernisation and
optimisation of land exploitation.
Few cities can claim continuous historical presence over two millennia. Born out of a fortunate
interplay of historical conditions, economic necessity, geographical factors, and a moment of insight,
Thessaloniki has been recounted as oriental and European at the sametime, while Greeks, Romans,
Byzantines, Ottomans, Jews, Turks, Armenians, Slavs, Levantines, French and British all walked its
streets leaving a part of them behind. Merchants and soldiers, monks and administrators, wealthy
aristocrats and city beggars equally shaped the destiny of Thessaloniki with their presence, their
hopes and aspirations during their ephemeral passage. Some thrived, others perished, and if one
looks closely, one can find their traces on the contemporary urban scenery. I, myself, grew up in this
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city, in the eastern part. I used to walk home after school along the seafront or later in life to go
downtown to study, work or meet friends. I remember the place burning hot during summer, freezing
cold in winter, completely empty when it rained, or full of people at sunset walking back and
forthwaiting for the evening breeze to cool the air. I remember the sea always on my side every time
I wondered around, like an ever present compass, pointing to the right direction in just a glimpse.
Yet, this city’s finest moment comes when it wears its cloak: the fog arrives as if summoned to calm
the cityscape, bring out its memories and reveal its real beauty. The mountains in the west and the
gulf fade away, the city pace slows down allowing people to perceive it in a different way: there is no
horizon norcolors to define time, past and present intertwine even if only for a moment. My moment.
There in front of my eyes � feel there lies an opportunity to connect with what was here before, to
understand what is of real value and to imagine what it will be. You need ghosts, the daily news and
prophecy.*
(Yiorgis Yerolymbos, March 2013)
VASILIS ZOGRAFOS (Greece/Thessaloniki) / painting
Born in Mytilini, Lesvos in 1965. Lives and works in Thessaloniki.
Vasilis Zografos’s work concentrates on inner, personal moments and states of mind. His still lives
and landscapes – a mountain, an airplane, a set of keys, the head of an African statuette, a set of
cutlery, a diver deep into the sea confronting a shark, all depicted with an almost monochromatic
palette of greys and olive greens, are essentially portraits of inner personal psychological
dispositions. […]
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