Artworks – AR Pavilion Venice 2024

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BLCK SQR, 2020

FO SHO

FO SHO - BLCK SQR [Official Music Video] © 2020 Written and directed by Taras Golubkov

The Balloons, 2023 / The Wedding from Last Year, 2017

0 - Issa Touma

The Balloons, 2023 Digital Photography. Limited Edition.  Courtesy of the Artist. Ahmad works all night to help his family. The photo is not about hope. It's the color of surviving.   The Wedding from Last Year, 2017 Digital Photography. Limited Edition.  Courtesy of the Artist. Since 2016, retired professor Walid Hanjro has been living in the basement of his house which was destroyed in the bombings. He has only been able to afford to repair the kitchen and one room so far.

Unfair Game, 2023

1 - Saddam Jumaily

200 cm x 200 cm, Acrylic on canvas Courtesy of the Artist. Considering his disturbing past in Iraq and his uprooting from one location to another, a surreal nostalgia for places and objects of different temporalities infuses the artist’s work. The chaos and confusion of his subjects reflect the harshness of Iraqi reality and two decades of regional turmoil.

Long Nights, 2024

2 - Kholod Hawash

140 cm x 200 cm Textile work New commission for the AR Pavilion This vibrant appliqué textile work literally sews  images of liberation, protest and freedom from oppression into a colourful patchwork quilt. The relation of this traditional technique, passed on from mother to daughter contrasts and revolts against the violence of female reality in the Middle East.

Safe.Berlin.Home!4 Roma

3 - Damian Le Bas

145 x 198  cm Courtesy of the Artists at Risk. Throughout his life, Le Bas tried to re-fashion images of Roma people in an affirming light, sauntering his work with positive, rather than depressing, images. Frequent motifs consisted of flowers, textured eyes, wheels, erased borders and nations, people, sometimes adorning objects like globes into gallivanting groups of smiling Gypsies on the move. 
 

Thousand Years Refugees, 2015

4 - Damian Le Bas

Thousand Years Refugees, 2015 From the series United Colors of Gypsy. 175 cm x 220 cm Courtesy of the Gallery Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix. As part of the community of Romani people, Le Bas's maps transcend the scientific and pedagogical materials which delineate towns, cities and countries, uniting them in the reality of transnational Roma life. The Travellers and Gypsy communities (N.B. the latter term is used only in a positive way by Roma in the British Isles) have learned to overcome borders, often due to forced migration as ‘outsiders everywhere’.

Fixing the World, 2024

5 - Saddam Jumaily

320 cm x 230 cm, Acrylic on canvas New commission for the AR Pavilion The chaos of a world in which a ‘normal’ imaginary life of comfort is confronted with a surreal reality marks this Iraqi artist's imaginary. Based on a life between home and exile, war and peace, a lost past and an uncertain future we find a painterly world in which domesticity and the cruel reality of the world are inseparable.

 

Marriage in the Area My Father Loved, 2023 / Let’s Take a Selfie in Front of Your Aunt’s Home, 2017. 

6 - Issa Touma

Marriage in the Area My Father Loved, 2023. Digital Photography. Limited Edition.  Courtesy of the Artist. Pethia promised her father that she would get married in Aleppo, no matter the circumstances. Her father loved the city, tragically effaced by years of war only to be compounded by a terrible earthquake. Her husband Arthur and her decided to celebrate on the ruins of the old city, to make for “a new beginning”.   Let’s Take a Selfie in Front of Your Aunt’s Home, 2017.  3840 x 2160 px. Digital photography. Unsigned, Open Edition. Courtesy of the Artist. “Let’s take a selfie in front of auntie’s home”, said the daughter to her mother.

what if..?, 2024

7 - Nikita Kravtsov

400 cm x 400 cm, Marker on Canvas New commission for the AR Pavilion Nikita Kravtsov is considering the thematics of the 60th Art Biennale Foreigners Everywhere. He is pointing out how in the era of war everyone can become a foreigner. He created the work with a durational monotone marker drawing process reflecting the long building process of Venice. Accordingly the marker colour is slowly vanishing like a city disappearing.

Whale – Borders 1, 2024

8 - Said Ahmed Mohammed Alhassan

90 cm x 90 cm Delicate materials such as tesserae, stone, glass, ceramic. Rounded tube covered by mosaic New Commission for the AR Pavilion In the circular ceramic sculptures Whale - Borders 1 & 2, the interplay of textures and depths invites contemplation, blurring the lines between perception and reality as it unveils the fluidity of existence through abstract forms and symbolic motifs. The shape of a rescue-ring speaks volumes about the fate of life in exile from one of the worst conflicts of our time in Sudan.

Whale – Borders 2, 2024

9 - Said Ahmed Mohammed Alhassan

Whale - Borders 2, 2024 90 cm x 90 cm Fabrics of immigrants and some mosaics on the tyre tube New Commission for the AR Pavilion In the circular ceramic sculptures Whale - Borders 1 & 2, the interplay of textures and depths invites contemplation, blurring the lines between perception and reality as it unveils the fluidity of existence through abstract forms and symbolic motifs. The shape of a rescue-ring speaks volumes about the fate of life in exile from one of the worst conflicts of our time in Sudan.

Olive Tree Mourning, 2024

10 - Baris Seyitvan

Performance New commission for the AR Pavilion It is said that after the Great Flood, a white dove with an olive branch in its beak flew to Noah's ark on the high waters. The olive branch, an expression of life after the destruction, meant that God extended his hand of peace and forgiveness to those on the ship. The city and region of Afrin in Rojava met the opposite fate. The Turkish armed forces entered in 2018, wreaking wide-spread destruction, sexual violence, death and ethnic cleansing. This Turkish military operation went under the title of "Operation Olive Branch". In his performance, Baris Seyitvan reflects on these horrific events from the perspective and silent pain experienced by the olive tree.


Gypsyland. Roma & Sinti Saga, 2014

11 - Damian Le Bas

28 cm x 28 cm x 39 cm, Mischtechnik auf Globus Courtesy of the Gallery Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix. Towards the end of his colourful and momentous life, tragically cut short at the peak of his powers, Damian Le Bas (Sr.) became increasingly passionate about cartography. His works on maps symbolises the transnational nature of “Gypsyland”. Going beyond the realm of the Roma community, he presents us with the idea of the world as one inclusive entity.

Crimes Against Humanity, 2024

12 - Nkosolathi Moyo

Mannequin: New commission based on historical events Dimensions variable  Courtesy of the Artist. A prisoner’s outfit with “human rights criminal” inscribed on the back. Such was the birthday present which Nkosilathi Moyo sent President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe in 2016 which led to his exile in South-Africa for one year.

Neuva Maja de Goya, 2024

13 - Nikita Kravtsov

170 cm x 280 cm New Commission for the AR Pavilion  This new commission by Nikita Kravtsov represents a conceptual reworking of the famed twin paintings by Francisco Goya, La Maja Vestida and La maja desnuda. While, for Goya, hiding and privacy relates to nudity, Kravtsov portrays the fault line between the appearances of a calm world, and the reality of destruction, and the political mechanisms of hiding this truth and reality.

Sound instrument sculptures, 2022

14 - Suva Deepdas

Post of Hierarchy, 2022 Sculptural pyrography 146 cm x 40 cm x 24 cm, Wood Courtesy of the Artist. Pyrographically-inscribed texts (inner): "Complexities commencing to the conjecture for convex contrary to concave”  Pyrographically-inscribed texts (surrounding): “Foretelling, Portending, Prognosticate, Presaging, Adumbrate, Auspicate and Harbingering Destiny!”

Sound instrument sculptures, 2022 Presage, 40 cm x 18 cm x 20 cm Synthesis, 27 cm x 43 cm  x 32 cm Corporealocution, 72 cm x 31cm x 33 cm Courtesy of the Artist. Suva:  “We know that in terms of discourse there is thesis countered by anti-thesis, but also that both are examined by synthesis. What we actually need is synthesis to find a third root instead of two extremes. That is also the situation of migrants trying their best to find a way to their destined destinations.” 

Kabul Cinema, 2004

15 - Mirwais Rehab

Short Film Single channel video projection.  Courtesy of the Artist. Kabul Cinema won the Ellen Award at the Aspen Film Festival in the USA, received a Special Mention of the Jury at the Hamburg Short Film Festival and was screened at many international festivals. Mirwais Rekab is the recipient of over 10 international film awards, including a Golden Globe for DOP of Osama, which was awarded the Best Foreign Language Film – Afghanistan.

Romani Embassy, 2017

17 - Delaine Le Bas

Diplomatic representation is a key symbol of statehood, which Roma have never enjoyed. The reason is simple: they are a non-territorial people. Does a lack of territory really imply a lack of statehood? Why is there no permanent national Roma Pavilion at the Venice Biennale? These are the questions raised by this work. This sign and performance in the tradition of ‘art povera’ symbolises the lack of representation of the Romani people at many high tables. The Romani Embassy is simply wherever Delaine Le Bas or her colleagues hang the sign.

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