The Venice Biennale, via Art Observed
As May begins, the city of Venice is preparing for the the 56th edition of the Biennale, set to open doors to press this week. With the sheer scale of events, openings and exhibitions set to open this coming Wednesday through Saturday, the art world will turn its attention to the City of Bridges in earnest. (more…)
The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at this year’s Venice Biennale will go to Ghanian artist El Anatsui. “The Golden Lion Award acknowledges not just his recent successes internationally, but also his artistic influence amongst two generations of artists working in West Africa,” says Biennale Director Paolo Baratta. “It is also an acknowledgment of the sustained, crucial work he has done as an artist, mentor and teacher for the past forty-five years.” (more…)
Last July, the Tate Modern opened its doors for a special exhibition that went beyond the set norms and techniques of exhibition planning. Meschac Gaba’s Museum of Contemporary African Art was a special project expanding twenty years of work across two continents, accumulated and exhibited in the rooms of the London museum. Composed of twelve different spaces, the large-scale exhibition was an outcome of Gaba’s investigation of the arts in African countries while questioning the often problematic affair between African art and the decision makers of the art dynamic and markets of the West.
Continuing some of these thematics, Gaba is currently presenting his latest body of work at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. As the title Exchange Market suggests, the content of the exhibition is distinguishably opinionated regarding the global economic structures and the imbalance of labor against income for the vast majority of societies around the world. Hailing from Benin, Gaba has lived and worked in The Netherlands, and seizes on the issues surrounding the unfair distribution of wealth and the exploitation of the less privileged from a Non-Western point of view. This duality also ties to other oppositions such as First World versus Third World or Developed versus Underdeveloped, suggesting a breakdown of the separation between the powerful and the weak.
Downstairs at Bonakdar, Ten marketplace stands showcasing a wide range of symbolic objects (hand tools, cotton balls, cacao beans, outdated or currently popular mobile phones) and banknotes from different countries attached onto umbrellas. Titled Bureau d’Exchange (Exchange Office), the ten-table installation presents devalued or still in use African currencies printed with multiple zeros, as well as certain Western banknotes with many fewer zeros. Reduced to sheets of paper hanging from the salvaged umbrellas, these banknotes make visually potent statements on the problematic connection between labor and income while discussing the disadvantaged political and economical structures around the globe, given no shade under these bare umbrellas.
Also on display on the first floor is a group of coin banks hung on the gallery walls. With their shapes inspired by famous bank logos or culturally potent figures, these banks do not serve for the common purpose of collecting money for charity or personal use; however they stand out as the silent emblems of a collectively desired utopian reality, ideally stemming from individual contributions.
The argument on collectiveness and global unity continues on the second floor where viewers are presented with four foosball tables, each made in Benin. Visually recalling the original Western pastime, the tables differ with their uncommon arrangements regarding the execution of the game. The soccer tables Gaba presents include players dressed in uniforms of different nations and players of markedly different races as opposed to generic and neutral players.
As components of a unitary operation, all connected to each other, players on these soccer tables stand out as the embodiments of current economical and social structures planned according to different goals and strategies. In one, for instance, a smiling, American flag-clad team is pitted against one bearing a uniform of pan-African identity. The oppositions are striking. From a more optimistic point of view, these players emphasize the artist’s statement on a utopian collective agenda that is solely accessible through a global awakening and realization.
Meschac Gaba: Exchange Market is on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery through June 7th, 2014.
— O.C. Yerebakan
Related Links:
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery [Exhibition Page]
Tate Modern [Exhibition Page]
Stan Douglas, Luanda-Kinshasa (Installation view), all images courtesy David Zwirmer
Currently on view at David Zwirmer’s 533 West 19th Street location is the debut of a new film by Stan Douglas entitled Luanda-Kinhshasa, featuring a reconstruction of the famed Columbia 30th Street studio, where some of the most iconic recordings of the twentieth century were originally produced. The film will be on view at the gallery through February 22, 2014.
In anticipation of her upcoming show at the Brooklyn Museum, New York Magazine sat down with artist Wangechi Mutu to discuss her elusive, layered collage techniques, her influences in science fiction and mythology, and her views on images of international black identity. “In National Geographic you always saw pictures of tribal Africa. And here I am sitting in Nairobi, in our suburban house, watching TV and thinking, ‘Why is it always going to be these tribal people that are the ambassadors of our image?’” She says. (more…)
The Tate Modern has announced a selection of new exhibitions focusing on artists from the African continent. Featuring retrospectives of work by Sudan’s Ibrahim El-Salahi, 82, and the Lebanese artist Saloua Raouda Choucair, as well as a large-scale installation by Meschac Gaba (where the artist created his own, fictional museum), the move underlines the museum’s more global view towards the contemporary landscape. “These are all exhibitions that 20 or 30 years ago were quite impossible,” says Tate Modern director, Chris Dercon. “At some point it will be absolutely normal and absolutely necessary to have all these kinds of work, all these artists, together in one museum.” (more…)
GQ is currently featuring an interview with painter Kehinde Wiley, profiling the artist on a recent trip to Morocco for his ongoing portraiture series. Charting the artist’s early life in South Central Los Angeles through his ascension in the art world, the piece offers a studied history of both Wiley’s life and output, including his famous portrait of Michael Jackson. Initially, “I ignored him, because quite honestly I thought it was a prank,” Wiley says. “Surprisingly, he was really knowledgeable about art and art history.” (more…)
