Exhibitions // Sumac Space–Art Practices of the Middle East https://sumac.space/exhibitions/ Mon, 21 Jul 2025 15:48:22 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 https://sumac.space/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/cropped-Sumac-Space-logo-32x32.jpg Exhibitions // Sumac Space–Art Practices of the Middle East https://sumac.space/exhibitions/ 32 32 Generative Encounters https://sumac.space/exhibitions/generative-encounters/ Mon, 21 Jul 2025 15:45:58 +0000 https://sumac.space/?post_type=qzr_exhibitions&p=4973 Generative Encounters–A Five-Day Creation and ReciprocityA project by Vereinigung für genreverbindende Kunstprojekte in collaboration with Sumac Space Conceived by Amelie Conrad / Davood Madadpoor Generative Encounters–A Five-Day Creation and Reciprocity is a program accompanying the international professional encounters conceived by the Vereinigung für genreverbindende Kunstprojekte in collaboration with Sumac Space. It is designed as part […]

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Generative Encounters–A Five-Day Creation and Reciprocity
A project by Vereinigung für genreverbindende Kunstprojekte in collaboration with Sumac Space

Conceived by Amelie Conrad / Davood Madadpoor

Generative Encounters–A Five-Day Creation and Reciprocity is a program accompanying the international professional encounters conceived by the Vereinigung für genreverbindende Kunstprojekte in collaboration with Sumac Space. It is designed as part of cultural mediation to engage a young audience.

Generative Encounters continues collaborating with artists and cultural practitioners previously built around Sumac Space and VgK. We aim to create a space for exchange where the outcomes often represent the most visible manifestations of relationships, friendships, and collaborations.


The program encompasses several events: two pop-up group exhibitions (Home, Home, Home, Temporary Home and Farmers of God’s Universe Live by the Click), a book presentation (POSTPOSTPOST: Reflections on a New Avant-garde), a music performance (Mutaradim مُتَرَدِّمْ by Siska and Felix Claßen), Film screening & conversation with Clementine Butler-Gallie & Siska (Studio Baalbeck – An Emerging Lexicon), a three-day workshop in collaboration with the CoFUTURES research project (Science Fictionality: Training Workshop), and a conversation between Sumac Space (Davood Madadpoor), DAr. Design, Architecture, Research (Eliana Martinelli, Cecilia Fumagalli, Chiara Simoncini) and VgK-Art in Context (Amelie Conrad). As a closing event, you are invited to a culinary experience titled SabroSura Sabro: Flavorful Images of the Arab Caribbean, curated by the Instituto de Cultura Árabe de Colombia.

MORE INFO: contact@sumac.space

Day 1: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12

All-day closed event

Day 2: Wednesday, September 13

9 am – 4 pm closed event

Exhibitions Opening Sept. 13, 7 pm
On view Sept. 13-17, 2023, 6-9 pm

Home, Home, Home, Temporary Home

Parisa Aminolahi, Vooria Aria, Fatih Aydogdu, Christine Kettaneh, Siavash Naghshbandi, Anahita Razmi, Sara Sallam
Curated by Davood Madadpoor

Home, home, home. Temporary home, sublet home. Place with stuff that isn’t mine. I don’t know the contents of the boxes under the bed in which I sleep. I didn’t buy the sheets I use every night. The cat I share the bed with doesn’t know my name. Home, home, home. I get home. Claudia Pagès

The concept of the exhibition is rooted in my continual encounters with change and transformation experienced through my stay in Europe. It began in August 2013, ten years ago, when I settled in a part of Italy, not as a local but as a voyager. After a decade of living in Italy, I decided to embrace a new challenge that involves building a home that holds both physical significance and sentimental value—a place where my dreams can take root and live on. To me, the intent of building a home considers the material structures, the intangible experiences and aspirations for the future.

The exhibition looks at the heavy connotations of “home”, looking at wider socio-political considerations and creating a constructed realm. This realm, perhaps, can only take shape in imagination. A place where constant changes and the swift passage of time have taken the place of contemplation, changes that not only render the concept of time unintelligible but also compel you to ask questions—questions that you carry even within the soil and structure of your home.

The title is borrowed from Claudia Pagès’s book Rage, Home & Insults.

Farmers of god’s universe live by the click
Curated by Ruba Al-Sweel

“The analog clock imitated the circularity of the day, but digital timekeeping has no arms, no circles, no moving parts. It is a number, stationary in time. It just is. The tribal community lived in the totality of circular time; the farmers of God’s universe understood before and after; workers of the clockwork universe lived by the tick; and we creatures of the digital era must relate to the pulse. Digital time does not flow; it flicks. Like any binary, discrete decision, it is either here or there. In contrast to our experience of the passing of time, digital time is always in the now, or in no time. It is still. Poised.” Douglas Rushkoff in ‘Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now’ 

The image today moves differently. It moves with us, past us and between us. Through a click, a scroll, a flip. In our pockets, on the big and small screen. It’s stitched into the very fibers of our skin as we produce and reproduce projections of ourselves and the world. It flows alongside and against us as markets fluctuate and forces wax and wane. It travels upstream, downstream and everywhere else in between.

This capsule group exhibition presents moving image works by artists who utilize network and digital technologies as medium and material to look at value and time performed online and mediated through screens today. 

19:30 – 20:00
Mutaradim مُتَرَدِّمْ, Music Performance
by Felix Claßen and Siska

Mutaradim مُتَرَدِّمْ is the first joint release by Siska & Felix Claßen. Together, they have recorded four pieces that unearth repressed memories, connect historical background noise with anger and newfound aggressiveness, and bring them back to life in musical form.

In the northeastern part of Madagascar, the Indri, a lemur species, is believed to house the souls of deceased people. Due to human interventions in their habitat, this species, also known as the singing ape, is on the brink of extinction. The piercing howl of an Indri marks the beginning of “Mutaradim.” The duo has recorded four pieces in which they uncover repressed memories, intertwine the background noise of history with anger, and resurrect them through music.

“Mutaradim” emerged from a current, immediate impulse. Siska & Felix Claßen seek answers to a catastrophe that leaves one speechless: the explosion of a large quantity of ammonium nitrate on August 4, 2020, in the port of Beirut, which devastated large parts of the city, claimed over 200 lives and deprived many more residents of their livelihoods. Through artistic means, the musicians respond to the asymmetries of power, regimes of misconduct, and their acute consequences, condensed within a reverberating space of overlapping references. (Arno Raffeiner)

Siska was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and currently lives and works in Berlin. He holds a Master’s degree in Film and Audiovisual Arts from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts in Beirut. Siska’s work explores personal and collective memories of social and political narratives. His use of film language and cinematic codes to activate an archive allows him to experiment with forms of storytelling and his own biography. At the Haus der Statistics in Berlin in August-2021, he co-curated a series of conversations, films, readings, and live performances as the artistic director of redeem رديم , a platform for ongoing conversations between voices from Beirut in Berlin. Additionally, Siska has produced and performed music as part of the Lebanese hip-hop group Kitaa Beirut قطاع بيروت. Over the past few years, he has collaborated on numerous performances and music productions, taking a midway point between his career as an artist and musician. In 2022, he completed his residency and fellowship at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles.

Felix Claßen is a musician, producer and arts educator from Berlin. He is part of the Duo Lonski & Classen, which has released several albums and has extensively toured across Europe and Japan. For almost 20 years, Felix has been an active voice in the independent music scene of Berlin, curating events that combined different artistic approaches and disciplines as well as running a record label and studio named OSTHAFEN. Besides his current studies for a master’s degree (Art in Context) at the University of the Arts Berlin, Felix hosts sound-related workshops for kids and adults alike. His latest collaborative artistic project “Den Berg Hören” is related to an ecological transformation from the perspectives of sound art, storytelling and choreography.

Day 3: Thursday, September 14

Closed event
Science Fictionality: Training Workshop
by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay

The CoFUTURES workshops are multi-day training sessions that train participants in worldbuilding, speculative methods, and futurisms. In these workshops, we pair hands-on prototyping activities for participants with instructor led sessions that cover the methods, tools, and strategies used in futures and speculative thinking. Learn more at https://cofutures.org/

The workshop instructors are different members and affiliates of the CoFUTURES group and science fiction writers. In our workshops, we have trained artists, scientists, business professionals, tech industry professionals, innovators, university educators, and environmental activists. Our most recent workshops have been held for United Nations Innovation teams and for scientists at International Space University (France).

The Berlin workshop will be built around different speculative manifestos that will guide practical exercises and discussions. The workshop comprises three theory (strategy) sessions, three activity sessions, and two building sessions. The readings for the theory sessions will be provided.

Participation is free. To do so, kindly email contact@sumac.space with the subject line “Training Workshop.” In the email, please include a brief description of your interest in the workshop topic, along with your relevant experience and personal background.

Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay is Associate Professor in Global Culture Studies at IKOS, University of Oslo, Norway. He leads the international research group CoFUTURES. Chattopadhyay is the leader (PI) of two major research projects funded by the European and Norwegian Research Councils, which explore contemporary global futurisms movements from a transmedial perspective, including literature, film, visual arts, and games. Chattopadhyay runs the Holodeck, a state of the art games research lab at UiO. He is also an Imaginary College Fellow at the Center for Science and the Imagination, Arizona State University. Chattopadhyay is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including the World Fantasy Award (2020). Chattopadhyay has written or edited ten books, published numerous articles, exhibited in six transnational art projects, and produced the award-winning film Kalpavigyan: A Speculative Journey, the first documentary on science fiction from India and Bengal.

18:00 – 19:00
POSTPOSTPOST Meetup!

Meet and devirtualize with the PPP community, hard on the heels of the freshly printed publication ‘POSTPOSTPOST: Reflections on a New Avant-Garde’, Volume l. https://postpostpost.com/

‘POSTPOSTPOST: Reflections on a New Avant-garde’ is a 274-pager billed as an ‘anti-manifesto’ for a new cultural frontier, home to original essays by and interviews with over 30 writers, artists, designers, academics, and thinkers across a wide geography.

Co-edited by multidisciplinary designer, architect and Creative Director Alhassan Elwan and writer, curator and new media researcher Ruba Al-Sweel.

Day 4: Friday, September 15

Closed event
Science Fictionality: Training Workshop
by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay

19:00 – 19:45
DAr in Berlin

Presentation of DAr – international journal of architecture in the Islamic world, in conversation with Sumac Space (Davood Madadpoor), DAr (Eliana Martinelli, Cecilia Fumagalli, Chiara Simoncini) and VgK-Art in Context (Amelie Conrad)


DAr. Design, Architecture, Research is an biannual international journal aimed at investigating the Islamic culture from the point of view of the architectural and urban design, without referring to specific geographical areas of l Dar-al-Islam and addressing also those architectural and urban characters of the Islamic world that are being consolidating outside its traditional limits. Although the journal aims above all to deepen and consolidate the formal architectural values of the Islamic world, it fosters at the same time an exchange of knowledge between architectural and urban composition and landscape architecture, interior design, history and criticism, philosophy, anthropology and sociology, having as its ultimate goal the reflection on the city, intended as an inclusive and intercultural large house (Dār in Arabic).

Cecilia Fumagalli (1983) is an architect. She received her Master’s degree in Architecture from Politecnico di Milano in 2009. Since then, she has been engaged in several architectural and urban conservation projects in Morocco, Malaysia, Mauritania and Saudi Arabia. Convinced of the strict link between theory, practice, and teaching, she completed in 2017 her PhD in Architectural Composition with honours. From 2017 to 2022, she has been teaching in Architecture faculties in Italy and abroad. In 2019, she cofounded NOSTOI (DAr’s editor) for the promotion of the architectural and urban culture of the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Middle and Near Easts.

Eliana Martinelli (1987) is an architect and Assistant Professor at the University of Perugia, Dpt of Civil and Environmental Engineering. In 2017, she completed a PhD in Architectural Composition with honours at the IUAV University of Venice. She has been teaching positions at the Université Euromed de Fes (Morocco), University of Pisa, Federico II University of Naples, SRH Heidelberg (Germany) and the University of Florence. She has been a research fellow in the field of the regeneration of architectural heritage by involving the communities. She publishes numerous essays, coordinates design workshops and participates in international conferences and seminars on these topics.

Chiara Simoncini (1996) is an architect and a Ph.D. candidate in Architectural and Urban Design at the University of Florence. Since 2021, she has been a lecturer in the Architectural Design and Interior Design laboratories. Between 2022 and 2023, she was a doctoral researcher at the University of Miami, College of Civil & Architectural Engineering, specializing in Ocean Sciences & Architecture. Her published work revolves around her main research interests, which include Mediterranean architecture with a particular emphasis on the conservation of the landscape of small coastal towns and the modernist architectural heritage of vernacular realities in the former Socialist Soviet Republics.

20:00 – 20:45
Studio Baalbeck – An Emerging Lexicon
Film screening & conversation with Clementine Butler-Gallie & Siska 

Focusing on the archives of Studio Baalbeck – what could be thought of as a national film heritage of Lebanon – the workshop focused on outlining and exploring the intermingled economies that shape and surround cultural production in general and the film industry in specific. How do the specific geopolitics of a region unfold through the labor of individuals and institutions? How can archival work – through research and reconstruction – draw out the intricacies of local and global economic, political, and personal structures? The Perverted Archival Image workshop centered on and tentacled off from Studio Baalbeck. The workshop participants created an audio montage of recordings to accompany some of the visual archive material and a lexicon was constructed as a tool in attempting to make legible the unknowns of the Studio Baalbeck Archive. This lexicon will act as a map to guide the screening and conversation. The workshop was convened by Ayman Nahle and Siska and took place online from October 2021 – March 2022 as part of the Whole Life Academy Berlin.

Siska was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and currently lives and works in Berlin. He holds a Master’s degree in Film and Audiovisual Arts from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts in Beirut. Siska’s work explores personal and collective memories of social and political narratives. His use of film language and cinematic codes to activate an archive allows him to experiment with forms of storytelling and his own biography. At the Haus der Statistics in Berlin in August-2021, he co-curated a series of conversations, films, readings, and live performances as the artistic director of redeem رديم , a platform for ongoing conversations between voices from Beirut in Berlin. Additionally, Siska has produced and performed music as part of the Lebanese hip-hop group Kitaa Beirut قطاع بيروت. Over the past few years, he has collaborated on numerous performances and music productions, taking a midway point between his career as an artist and musician. In 2022, he completed his residency and fellowship at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles.

Clementine Butler-Gallie works in the field of curation and artistic research with an interest in future spaces for and past stories of cultural exchange and encounter. She works on curatorial projects for Arts Cabinet, a pluri-disciplinary research platform that functions as a space to experiment with different forms of artistic knowledge production, she co-organises the curatorial network ‘Continued Conversations’, and is an editor at JAWS journal. Her various projects have been in collaboration with spaces such as HALLE 14, Leipzig; Mansion, Beirut; Feldfünf, Berlin; CAP, Kuwait, among others. Her current research project titled ReRouting explores the potential in walking as a curatorial space with a specific focus on collective action on sites of division.

Day 5: Saturday, September 16

Closed event
Science Fictionality: Training Workshop
by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay

Day 6: Sunday September 17

9 am – 4 pm closed event

19:00 – 20:30
SabroSura Sabro صورة: Flavorful Images of the Arab Caribbean
صور لذيذة من منطقة البحر الكاريبي العربية
by Instituto de Cultura Árabe de Colombia

The Arab Culture Institute of Colombia invites you to the culinary activation: “SabroSura: Flavorful Images of the Arab Caribbean”. SabroSura is an ephemeral space to celebrate the encounter and merging of Arab* and Latin American* cultures on the Caribbean coasts of the American continent. We taste firsthand the flavors of this region and dare to create new culinary pairings while visualizing migratory processes and culinary encounters of the thousands of Arab migrants that arrived during the 19th and 20th centuries, and their descendants.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, millions of Arabs left their countries to go to “Amrika”, an uncertain share of land across the ocean. Most of them first arrived on the Caribbean coasts of some countries and later moved inland. Often and erroneously called “Turks”, they brought little to no material possessions, but an immense repertory of memories and cultural practices that connected them to their homelands and also allowed them to tie in with their host societies. Decades after, the “Arab Caribbean” region is present in Colombia and other Latin American countries. Nowadays, the distinction between the once “local” and what was once “foreign” becomes blurred and turns into the quotidian. It is a place of traditions and sentiments evoked through various practices, especially culinary ones. A region where recipes and ingredients carried through oceans by the Arab diaspora are used on a daily basis as part of the local cuisine. Gabriel García Márquez captured facets of this multicultural territory that embodies Magical Realism in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. Join us as we explore the many possibilities within the “Arab Caribbean,” a region that is imaginary, yet real.

* Arab and Latin American are broad and fluid terms that may not fully encompass the realities of communities associated with them. These terms are worthy of critique and revisitation in a post-colonial context.

Instituto de Cultura Árabe de Colombia Established in 2017 as a not-for-profit, non-political and non-religious independent organization based in Barranquilla, Colombia, the Institute of Arab Culture of Colombia aims to connect through multiple channels in Colombia and the Arab-Latin Diaspora with the Arab-speaking world. The Institute serves and is recognised today as a platform to generate intercultural dialogue and to bolster opportunities of growth and development between the regions and amongst its peoples through art, culture, research and other related interactions.

GENERATIVE ENCOUNTERS–A FIVE-DAY CREATION AND RECIPROCITY
A project by Vereinigung für genreverbindende Kunstprojekte in collaboration with Sumac Space

Conceived by Amelie Conrad / Davood Madadpoor

Vereinigung für genreverbindende Kunstprojekte (VgK) was founded in Berlin in 2004 and is dedicated to the production and mediation of new artistic strategies in visual arts, theater, music, and literature in cooperation with universities, private and state-subsidized cultural institutions and municipalities. The central focus of the Berlin art association is the intersection of science and art, which is increasingly crucial in our globalized modern knowledge society. Considering cultural diversity and the identity of nations, art plays a crucial role in enhancing our understanding of the world as a cultural space.

In this field, the VgK conceived and curated the annual artist-in-residence program PHYSIS – A European project for interdisciplinary art, process-oriented, and conceptual work. PHYSIS is annually presented with an extensive supporting program and exhibition cycles in Germany, Italy and Greece. With the initiative International Youth and Autumn Academy Assisi, the VgK offers additionally a program for youth and young adults in the spectrum of science, art and intercultural dialogue. cc-art-context.de

We thank all participating partners for their contribution.
The international professional encounter is supported by BKJ.

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Home, Home, Home, Temporary Home https://sumac.space/exhibitions/home-home-home-temporary-home/ Mon, 21 Jul 2025 15:35:27 +0000 https://sumac.space/?post_type=qzr_exhibitions&p=4972 Home, Home, Home, Temporary Home Parisa Aminolahi, Vooria Aria, Fatih Aydogdu, Christine Kettaneh, Siavash Naghshbandi, Anahita Razmi, Sara SallamCurated by Davood Madadpoor Home, home, home. Temporary home, sublet home. Place with stuff that isn’t mine. I don’t know the contents of the boxes under the bed in which I sleep. I didn’t buy the sheets […]

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Home, Home, Home, Temporary Home

Parisa Aminolahi, Vooria Aria, Fatih Aydogdu, Christine Kettaneh, Siavash Naghshbandi, Anahita Razmi, Sara Sallam
Curated by Davood Madadpoor

Home, home, home. Temporary home, sublet home. Place with stuff that isn’t mine. I don’t know the contents of the boxes under the bed in which I sleep. I didn’t buy the sheets I use every night. The cat I share the bed with doesn’t know my name. Home, home, home. I get home. Claudia Pagès

The concept of the exhibition is rooted in my continual encounters with change and transformation experienced through my stay in Europe. It began in August 2013, ten years ago, when I settled in a part of Italy, not as a local but as a voyager. After a decade of living in Italy, I decided to embrace a new challenge that involves building a home that holds both physical significance and sentimental value—a place where my dreams can take root and live on. To me, the intent of building a home considers the material structures, the intangible experiences and aspirations for the future.

The exhibition looks at the heavy connotations of “home”, looking at wider socio-political considerations and creating a constructed realm. This realm, perhaps, can only take shape in imagination. A place where constant changes and the swift passage of time have taken the place of contemplation, changes that not only render the concept of time unintelligible but also compel you to ask questions—questions that you carry even within the soil and structure of your home.

The title is borrowed from Claudia Pagès’s book Rage, Home & Insults.

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Zahra Zeinali. AU-DELÀ https://sumac.space/exhibitions/zahra-zeinali-au-dela/ Mon, 21 Jul 2025 15:27:35 +0000 https://sumac.space/?post_type=qzr_exhibitions&p=4971 A:D: Curatorial is pleased to host Zahra Zeinali’s exhibition au-delà. The exhibition brings together a series of Zahra Zeinali’s paintings and Installations from the last three years for her first solo show in Berlin. The opening of the exhibition follows the Meditation on Sound and Thoughts by Anton Kats.  In au-delà, Zahra Zeinali uses the […]

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A:D: Curatorial is pleased to host Zahra Zeinali’s exhibition au-delà. The exhibition brings together a series of Zahra Zeinali’s paintings and Installations from the last three years for her first solo show in Berlin. The opening of the exhibition follows the Meditation on Sound and Thoughts by Anton Kats

In au-delà, Zahra Zeinali uses the prism of her experiences as an Iranian immigrant to examine themes of exile, displacement, and trauma. She employs it to explore the sensations and memories of loneliness and vulnerability, expressing the agony and concussion of being uprooted and forced to navigate an unknown backdrop.

Her ten-year stay in Paris has enabled her to establish a distinct artistic style that is both introspective and surreal, allowing her to reflect on her past experiences and voice her feelings via the beauty of drawing and the nobleness of the material. Her autobiographical paintings frequently blend surrealist, fantastical, and whimsical aspects with darker and frightening subjects. She uses dolls that have been mistreated and shattered, acting as a striking metaphor for the often-lost innocence in hostile environments. 

Zeinali discloses the effects of the cruelty she has endured and depicts the isolation, vulnerability, and harshness of her own experiences. She uses iconography, such as masks and clowns, to cover harsh realities and create a sense of mystery in life. Her fascination with photography is also apparent in her paintings, which showcase compositions with bold, distinctive, and very open layouts.

Meditation on Sound and Thoughts by Anton Kats marks the opening of the exhibition. While operating modular synthesizers, tuning in to the space and the audience, the meditation is motivated by the disillusionment of borders and maps an entirely different set of cosmological coordinates. Fearlessly entangled with spirit and mythos and raising critical questions of ownership, care and belonging, this cosmic landscape meets the visitor halfway and invites unlearning of predetermined relational models.

Zahra Zeinali (b. 1975) completed her bachelor’s degree in painting from the Islamic Azad University of Tehran and worked as an art instructor for fifteen years. She developed an interest in photography and studied analog photography at the House of Iranian Photographers. In 2012, Zahra relocated to Paris to continue her artistic journey as a painter. Later, in 2022, she completed her studies at the EFET Photographie École. This milestone prompted her to explore merging the two techniques in her recent works. Additionally, she commenced her role as an art teacher for children and young students at Le Cercle des Arts in 2022, allowing her to tap into the realm of childhood inspiration. 

Zeinali has participated in several groups and solo exhibitions, including the recent Le Pays des Merveilles, Le Monde Invisible at Galerie Claire Corcia, and Alerte Rouge at Galerie Linda Farrell, Femme Vie Liberté at Galerie Sahar K. Boluki, Artcité à Fontenay, Comparaison au Grand Palais Éphémère, and Figuration Critique à Salon de Dessin Paris, among others.

Anton Kats’s practice draws from the everyday, inspired by the complex narratives of Satellite Island, a south-Ukrainian neighborhood in the port city of Kherson. Kats left Ukraine in 2000 to claim asylum in Germany. His work is complemented by the urgencies of displacement and the pragmatics of self-legalization in Europe by way of entering formal institutions of education. Kats’s work is motivated by questions of agency and intentionality. Flexibly augmenting art practice through sound, music, performance, radio and research, Kats develops responsive and site-specific projects exploring the interdependencies of learning, migration, and the non-normative.

Kats’s works have been introduced through the SAVVY Contemporary, Serpentine Galleries, Tate Modern, BBC 6 Music, The Lot Radio, the Showroom Gallery, Bergen Kunsthall, Sonic Acts, Roskilde and Fusion Festivals, CCA Berlin – Center for Contemporary Arts, Kochi Muziris Biennale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 10th Berlin Biennale, and at the documenta14 in Athens and Kassel, among others.

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Mind or Mend the Gap Merges Into Listening Into Hope https://sumac.space/exhibitions/mind-or-mend-the-gap/ Mon, 14 Jul 2025 15:00:19 +0000 https://sumac.space/?post_type=qzr_exhibitions&p=4960 Using the online platform as a space of transitions where boundaries blur, students from M.A. Raumstrategien/Spatial Strategies at Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee Amanda Bobadilla, Bianca Lee, Emma Lang, Nischal Khadka, Xiao Zhang, and xindi propose to the internet audience a trip. A journey that goes from the Mind or Mend the Gap, the 3-day exhibition and […]

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Using the online platform as a space of transitions where boundaries blur, students from M.A. Raumstrategien/Spatial Strategies at Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee Amanda Bobadilla, Bianca Lee, Emma Lang, Nischal Khadka, Xiao Zhang, and xindi propose to the internet audience a trip.

A journey that goes from the Mind or Mend the Gap, the 3-day exhibition and performances that took place in June 2024, as an output of the seminar Mobilizations (SuSe2024), held by Dr. Marianna Liosi, to the Listening into Hope radio broadcast that was shown on the 9th of July 2024 at the Refuge Worldwide Radio, as part of Dr. Anton Kats’ seminar Great Sound (SuSe2024). With the participation of several practitioners in the radio broadcast Listening into Hope, new narratives, sensitivities, practices, and spaces of resistance emerge.

Enjoy the listening!
Listening into Hope. Spatial Strategies

What does it mean to have hope? Is it a passive delusion or a path toward liberation? In this iteration of the Spatial Strategies on Refuge Worldwide, join this journey in musing through hope in our times.

In the studio: Reem Alfahad, Laura Bleck, Amanda Bobadilla, Cecilia Buffa, Nischal Khadka, Rebecca Korang, Emma Lang, Bianca Lee, Franziska Anastasia Lentes, Moana Mayall, Yupanqui Ramos, hany tea,  Xiao Zhang, Xindi Zhou.

In this porous world, gaps form and dissolve as cracks between cliffs, spaces between words, or air currents weave through our lives, revealing hidden possibilities and challenges. “Mind the gap,” a warning that creates a certain urgency; “Mend the gap,” care that sews common or individual wounds. Through their works, artists aim to pay attention, search, and focus on those potential leakages as spaces of expression: to be filled, to perfect, to create anew–or, if not, then to traverse their inevitable presence. In the Mind or Mend the Gap (23 – 26 June 2024; Donaustrasse 84 12043, Berlin), students focused on the transformative potential of affect and empathy as tools for individual or collective mobilization online and offline.

Emma Lang’s audio installation magnified otherwise imperceptible experiences into limitless narratives through a poetic overexpression. Amanda Bobadilla’s political cartography had fragmented and reassembled satellite maps, tracing historical and personal migrations and challenging viewers to rethink geographic and socio-political boundaries. Bianca Lee’s drawings reflected the mutable nature of memory through the lens of Arctic cloudberries, using confabulation to reconstruct reality in response to trauma. Xiao Zhang’s paper rubbings of bone shapes and meat fat remnants addressed food scarcity and economic inequality, highlighting the deep social imprints of deprivation and abundance. Nischal Khadka’s installation brought the musical instruments Nāyākhi and its sounds to delve deeper into the historical and cultural context of ritualistic drum sounds of Kathmandu Valley, which were at risk of extinction. xindi’s installation and the sound performance represented suppressed voices and censored expressions through different plants and narrative poetry, evoking the fragility and resilience of self-expression.

A cooperation between M.A. Raumstrategien Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee, Sumac Space and Vereinigung für genreverbindende Kunstprojekte; Coordinated by Dr. Marianna Liosi

Text: Dr. Marianna Liosi
Photo credit: Xiao Zhang

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Almacén المخزن Armazém [volume 1] https://sumac.space/exhibitions/almacen-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%ae%d8%b2%d9%86-armazem-volume-1/ Mon, 25 Apr 2022 08:46:25 +0000 https://sumac.space/?post_type=qzr_exhibitions&p=3799 Almacén de pequeñas interacciones entre grandes regiones y sus personas المخزن التفاعلات الصغيرة بين  المناطق  الكبيرة وشعبهاArmazém de pequenas interações entre grandes regiões e suas pessoas As a child in Paraguay, I grew up going to two almacenes for sweets. One was around the corner from home. The other one was three flights away. My first […]

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Almacén de pequeñas interacciones entre grandes regiones y sus personas
 المخزن التفاعلات الصغيرة بين  المناطق  الكبيرة وشعبها
Armazém de pequenas interações entre grandes regiões e suas pessoas

As a child in Paraguay, I grew up going to two almacenes for sweets. One was around the corner from home. The other one was three flights away. My first contact with the Arabic-speaking world was in the early 2000s in Levant, where I learned that sweets, no matter the ingredients or the distance, are still sweets. This formative period of two worlds connected by a child interacting with their sugar/azúcar/as-sukkar is what brings us here today.

Almacén المخزن Armazém is a multimedia research project storing and amplifying the archives and current explorations of artists, craft makers, chefs, musicians, and creatives at large who have ties to both Latin America* and the Arabic-speaking world. Playing on the Spanish word “almacén” and Portuguese “armazém” inherited from the Arabic “المخزنal-makhzen”, meaning “storage or warehouse”, this first volume focuses on micro and powerful interactions between the two regions by way of their peoples.

‘akhi huna present their album Aleluiá, which shares subtle references to a Brazilian family history with Lebanese roots. Honduras-born Adrian Pepe introduces Entangled Matters, in which he works with Awassi wool and its millenary history in Lebanon. Ana Escobar Saavedra draws parallels between rings and marriage alliances in Dubai’s gold souq and pre-Columbian alloys. Andrea Salerno finds in Dubai the accidental culmination of her Migratory Birds cuisine project once initiated in Rosario, Argentina. Cristina Serrano revisits her college years in Abu Dhabi with a street food menu cooked in her kitchen in Bogotá. Enrique Yidi restages the arrival of Arab migrants to Puerto Colombia with his mastery of mother-of-pearl crafts in Barranquilla-based Taller Palestina. Sofia Basto Riousse visualizes her growing relationship with the Khaleeji desert as a painter longing for Colombia’s green lands of Huila. 

Almacén المخزن Armazém seeks to situate itself historically, tracing heritages, genealogies, and contemporary migratory paths by way of the creative resources presented. Equally, it responds to a history of cultural exchange that, tracing back to colonial times and their European mediators, has had modern and contemporary manifestations too. 

Over the past century and a half, the Arabic-speaking world and Latin America have come into progressively closer contact. Periodic waves of Arab, mainly Shami/Levantine, migration to the Americas have led to São Paulo, Santiago de Chile, and Barranquilla having some of the most established Arab diaspora communities in the world. With them, cities like Asunción and Mexico City have been shaped by bearers of Arab last names to the extent of lomito árabe becoming Paraguay’s de facto street food and tacos al pastor revolutionizing Mexican cuisine forever. Parallel to this, West Asia and North Africa have developed a fan base of Latin telenovelas, embraced Messi and Ronaldinho football jerseys across cities, and began listening to reggaeton and its nuances from radios to clubs. Until recently, my Arabic teacher from Sweida and I logged into our Zoom calls with the Paraguayan and Druze versions of mate, mine with boldo, hers with bits of cardamom.

With two regions in contact come their events and icons. Wikipedia has dedicated a full page to unpacking the “cultural impact of Shakira”, a performer and singer-songwriter who, singing Fairuz songs at ‘90s family events, went on to conquer the world with her mentions of Bahrain-to-Beirut and the idea that hips don’t, and perhaps won’t ever, lie. Randomly, probably as Shakira Isabel Mebarak was performing for her family, the UAE had its first FIFA World Cup match against Colombia in June of 1990.  

Before and after Shakira’s pop hits and massive football competitions, a few other voices have existed who experimented with these two seemingly distant but almost identical worlds: artists. Among them stands Bibi Zogbé “La Pintora de las Flores”, an artist of the world, who existed between Lebanon, Argentina, and also Uruguay, and Senegal – maybe she became all these places too. Her paintings, and a chance encounter with her work in Art Dubai, serve as reminders that even with months-long boat trips, the Arab world and Latin America have indeed interacted visually, materially, and humanly. 

Today, the Latin–Arab arts landscape has gained more layers. To name a few recent examples, Curator Amanda Abi Khalil and the Temporary Art Platform organized in 2020 ‘Make Yourself at Home’: Tropical Escape for Lebanese Artists, a relief residency in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, following the Beirut blast. Lawrence Abu Hamdan has recently exhibited in Guatemala City (NuMu) and Bogotá (Mor Charpentier), being joined in the latter by Kader Attia and Bouchra Khalili. Argentina-based BIENALSUR took place in two Saudi cities before and after Covid, the Jameel Prize is currently in Chile, and Colombia comes with three potent voices to the next Sharjah Biennial. Today, Barranquilla is home to Instituto de Cultura Árabe de Colombia, a grassroots platform that has joined this research project as a curatorial mentor to study and identify past, current, and foreseeable interactions between both the Arab world and Latin America. All of these cross-pollinations have happened in less than five years, mostly at an institutional level. Therefore, hoping to multiply these encounters and document them, this research project shares an intimate perspective of artists in the Arab and Latin worlds who are seeking to preserve, test, and communicate their explorations by their own means.

Overall, Almacén المخزن Armazém is a living storage space and does not have all the answers or conclusive statements. Rather, it frames its archival intention by juxtaposing large regions (and their fluid linguistic, territorial, and diasporic boundaries) with the small, curious, and deeply personal explorations of people who have physically or imaginatively experienced both places. This first volume begins with artists born in Latin America who have roots in the Arab world and/or who have been part of contemporary migratory paths that have consolidated Dubai and Beirut as creative hubs in the Arab world. With these artists, their interactions, and what they have in store, the first premise of Almacén المخزن Armazém is one and the same: that Arab–Latin and Latin–Arab are not just hyphens or “identities” but, rather, lifestyles produced, recreated, and amplified by people. By consequence, we are moving towards a shapeshifting worldview that we could baptize Lárabe, but more fittingly so: Lعtin.

_Daniel H. Rey

* Latin America is a colonial term that limits access to the layers and fluidity of a vast region and its histories.

Daniel H. Rey b. 1998, San Juan de Pasto, Colombia. Lives and works in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, UAE. Daniel is an independent curator advocating for #YouthCuratingYouth and Latin-Arab cross-pollinations. His work balances institutional and grassroots presence via Art Jameel, Dirwaza Curatorial Lab, and Global Art Daily, among others. An emerging writer, arts educator and public programmer, he has participated in cultural projects in South America, the Arab Gulf, Scandinavia, and the USA. Daniel feels at home in Paraguay, Norway, the UAE, and hopefully in Mars. curator@danielhrey.com; @danihrey

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Dear Fractured Stones, https://sumac.space/exhibitions/dear-fractured-stones/ Sat, 20 Nov 2021 12:52:58 +0000 https://sumac.space/?post_type=qzr_exhibitions&p=3407 The exhibition Dear Fractured Stones,  brings together a group of artworks exploring the nature of stone as material, as medium, and as metaphor. The exhibition will highlight the theme – (re)collect/(re)connect – one that demonstrates a variety of artistic strategies for repairing and re-establishing connections. Fractured stones can be understood as former parts of larger […]

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The exhibition Dear Fractured Stones,  brings together a group of artworks exploring the nature of stone as material, as medium, and as metaphor. The exhibition will highlight the theme – (re)collect/(re)connect – one that demonstrates a variety of artistic strategies for repairing and re-establishing connections. Fractured stones can be understood as former parts of larger units whose connections are currently broken. A reparative attitude would thus allow these fragments to come together to form a unit, a whole.

Dear Fractured Stones, assembles nine artists from Iran and the Iranian diaspora. Although the presented works combine diverse art practices, they all share visual and content-related references to the themes of collection and archive. In this sense, fractured stones – whether depicted through installation, photography, as objects, or in painting – are transformed into condensed information carriers capable of absorbing and storing unknown narratives and, thus, of making such narratives visible. Behind each transformation lies an intention not only to not forget but also to actively remember. Such an approach shapes one’s self-image and worldview, and the selected works explore individual and collective memories, offering expanded insights into site-specific culture, history, politics, and mysticism, as well as into rituals connected with tomb culture and the occult.

What references to our present day and to our lived environment are contained within the idea (re)collect/(re)connect, and which strategies might serve as reparative in the context of an artwork?

Formal and playful in syntax, Dear Fractured Stones, refers to the standard salutation of a letter and thus suggests a communicative exchange, one in which the fractured stone now has a chance to reply.

_ Baharak Omidfard

Baharak Omidfard is a curator with both an artistic and academic background. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Communication from Tehran University of Art, Iran, and was later awarded a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Art History from the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany, with a focus on modern and contemporary art. In her academic work, Baharak Omidfard has extensively explored the topic of “farewell” in contemporary art. She has curated exhibitions for experimental art in Germany, France and Switzerland. She received a curatorial grant from Rhineland-Palatinate and has gathered work experience in several museums. Currently, she is interested in the interface between art and public spaces and her most recent research focus deals with artistic and research methods of “connection” and “disconnection”.

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Garden of e-arthly Delights https://sumac.space/exhibitions/garden-of-e-arthly-delights/ Sun, 05 Sep 2021 14:39:20 +0000 https://sumac.space/?post_type=qzr_exhibitions&p=3041 Through video compilation, digital archival material, and moving images, Garden of e-arthly Delights forays into the dark forest of the web to look at what’s budding underneath the surface. From viral videos and memelords churning out digital arte povera to new forces that impact market dynamics and political trends, this fertile ground incubates and accelerates […]

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Through video compilation, digital archival material, and moving images, Garden of e-arthly Delights forays into the dark forest of the web to look at what’s budding underneath the surface. From viral videos and memelords churning out digital arte povera to new forces that impact market dynamics and political trends, this fertile ground incubates and accelerates fringe movements and a new class of ideologues that together, test what we know.

Showcasing eight artists from, based in or around the GCC, whose works deal with memes as subject and medium, the exhibition explores wider expressions of gathering, ritual, and community to discover a new visual communicational landscape that maps out an alternative social terrain, varying definitions of being public and the terms of visibility and power.

The dark forest is a term borrowed from science fiction writer Liu Cixin and repurposed to refer to alternative spaces of consensus reality, in the wake of Web 2.0, where rigorous discourse takes place and overflows to the public in digestible formats — predominantly memes. It looks at the mushrooming of communities and the sprouting of a wide network across pockets online and out of sight, where relationships and connectivity that would otherwise take place in public, now play out in private.

Here, Gulfgraphixx draws from the pool of retro Gulf memes and comment section culture wars to bring into sharp relief what is otherwise bubbling in the gut-brain of the Khaleeji subconscious. Ahaad Alamoudi imagines a future where language is banned and replaced by a universal lingua franca that facilitates state surveillance. Basmah Felemban looks at world-building using a game engine to create a whole fictional universe where unity is not the underlying order in everything, rather duality and extreme paradoxes. Mythical creatures called ‘Jirri’ create a home out of a continuous stream of collaborative practices — playing, singing, and simply being together. Christopher Joshua Benton zeroes in on the exploitation of viral videos to foreground the invisible free labor of cultural production and the vectors that govern this market. Nadim Choufi overlays found footage with archived chats from LGBTQ+ chat forums, brought to life through Apple’s standard Arabic text-to-speech, unfolding the unrealized love of two people who never meet. Persia Beheshti presents an ethereal stage composed of compiled stock images, visual effects, and Tweets sourced from “angelicism” clone accounts on Twitter and Tumblr to recreate the “angelcore” aesthetic permeating these platforms. Fatemeh Kazemi collaborates with Chicago-based artist Maryam Faridani to take us into the secret worlds of female-only gatherings, the mirth of which is reflected on the screens of handhelds and documented in 10-second intervals on Instagram Stories. Shamiran Istifan brings together original footage and sourced imagery to spotlight the free association of posting patterns online through a fluid trickle of profound ruminations on space and theology, punctuated with altered verses from German rap culture.

Individually, these artists look at what has fallen in the crevices of the web to create dialogue trapped between the shifting policies of big tech and an institutional rejection and art market failure to invite and absorb them.

_ Ruba Al-Sweel

Press Release

Sophie Arni in conversation with Ruba Al-Sweel [Global Art Daily]

Into the Garden of e-artly Delights by Miikiina

Ruba Al-Sweel is an arts and culture writer and researcher from the Middle East with words in Art Asia Pacific, Vogue, VICE, The Brooklyn Rail, MOUSSE Magazine, among others. She holds a master’s degree in media and creative industries from SciencesPo, Paris, and takes particular interest in the emergence of internet subcultures. Al-Sweel also manages strategic, integrated, and global communications at Art Jameel, an independent organization that supports artists and creative communities.

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Unconquered Spirits https://sumac.space/exhibitions/unconquered-spirits/ Mon, 05 Apr 2021 12:53:24 +0000 https://sumac.space/?post_type=qzr_exhibitions&p=2097 What do forgotten or under-represented events say about historical writing and the politics of everyday life? If we trace them, where can the personal and collective memories, missing objects, or untold stories lead us today? In light of these questions, the works that comprise this exhibition irritates different forms of power structures such as institution, […]

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What do forgotten or under-represented events say about historical writing and the politics of everyday life? If we trace them, where can the personal and collective memories, missing objects, or untold stories lead us today? In light of these questions, the works that comprise this exhibition irritates different forms of power structures such as institution, archive, discrimination, and state violence. Questioning the misuse of power dynamics and unsettling internalized racist structures, Unconquered Spirits brings together works by artists Ulf Aminde, James Gregory Atkinson, Hanan Benammar, Mustafa Emin Büyükcoşkun, Cansu Çakar, Istihar Kalach, Rojda Tuğrul, and Ülkü Süngün. At a time when social, political, and environmental injustices seem overpowering, we tend to lose hope: hope for more equality, justice, and fresh air to breathe. In Hope in the Dark, a book that traces a history of activism and social change over the past decades, writer Rebecca Solnit writes, “Resistance is first of all a matter of principle and a way to live, to make yourself one small republic of unconquered spirit. You hope for results, but you don’t depend on them.” In a moment of crisis or in routines of daily life, we all seek for little escapes in safe places where we can fully be ourselves regardless of the situation we are in. When someone is being imprisoned for an unjustified, invalid reason, or when a law that you don’t support just passes, when someone is being attacked or discriminated against just for their looks or names, or when you think you have been treated unjustly, it is not enough to be a passive witness. The world needs more spaces for unconquered spirits to challenge authoritarian and oppressive structures. Although this may sound like it demands a clear and dedicated activist stance, it may be as easy as simply being yourself. At this point, the Solnit’s words open new paths, grow new branches, and encourage those who believe in any form of resistance. Whether through a journey of solidarity, an ancient mosaic from Hagia Sophia, an unwritten part of Middle Eastern art history, a juxtaposition of the Black Power fist and the white power salute, a documentation of the historical site Hasankeyf before its destruction, a mask eating Romulus and Remus, problematizing the term “desert ideology,” or a fictional monolog about the radical invention of institutions and self-governing, each work in the exhibition manifests a form of an unconquered spirit.

The starting point of Unconquered Spirits began a year ago before the founders of Sumac Space, Katharina Ehrl and Davood Madadpoor, invited me to develop an exhibition program. As an exhibition maker, one reads a poem, sees a face, talks to an artist, experiences an artwork, and there is already a beginning of a feeling or an idea for an exhibition. At the time, you may not be aware of it, but that subconscious desire to share it with the public and make an exhibition stays within you. Ever since I watched the film Set Off (2019) by Mustafa Emin Büyükcoşkun in 2020, I have been thinking about a possible and relevant context in which to make it public. When I saw the work for the first time in HfG (Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design), I was struck by Büyükcoşkun’s courage to handle such a sensitive topic in an immensely careful, poetic, and mindful way – not only because it is a highly politically engaged theme he is dealing with but also more importantly because it is about a journey where innocent people were killed. What remains beyond death? In 2015, thirty-three activists from different generations from across Turkey had been planning to travel to Kobane, a Kurdish town on the Syrian border, to help with rebuilding the town after it was hit by IS. It was a simple and genuine act of solidarity. On their way to Kobane they stopped in the small town Suruç before crossing the border to hold a press release at the Amara Cultural Centre in Suruç, where the tragic incident took place. Dancing on the border of documentary and art, the artist narrates a real-life story in three chapters from the perspective of the people who experienced or witnessed the event. Despite the heaviness of the topic, the work is carefully simplified. The storytelling is humble yet strong. Through a bus ride, conversations, and anecdotes, the work becomes increasingly relatable. As opposed to labeling people as radicals or terrorists, it touches a deeply humane part of the entire story.

The works by the artists Rojda Tuğrul and Ülkü Süngün all take place in specific locations and histories, and deal with underrepresented matters. Abuarafeh’s two video works including archival material came to life when she began digging into the recent art and exhibition history of Palestine. Rojda Tuğrul’s photo series are based on her long-term engagement with the ancient settlement and ecological territory of Hasankeyf along the Tigris River in Batman, Upper Mesopotamia, which is currently being left to submerge by the Turkish state as part of a dam project, despite local and international protests. Ülkü Süngün’s photo novel project narrates the delicate story of Sergo Pipia and Marina Tsertsvadze, a refugee couple from Georgia who lived in a small town near Stuttgart, Germany, before they took back their asylum application and returned, disillusioned, to their homeland. Each of the three artists focus on particular histories in the cities they have personal connection to – Jerusalem, Batman (Hasankeyf), and Stuttgart – and each of them are based on their own individual curiosities driven by overlooked topics.

The paintings of Istihar Kalach and Cansu Çakar represent a certain kind of humor, social-critique, and dream-like lightness at the same time. Kalach’s oil and acrylic paintings are not afraid of subtle uneasiness or absurdity; she modifies the objects and plays with the way we look at things. In her paintings, there is often a sense of duality. The mask paintings, for example, have four eyes: two black, referring to blindness and two melting eyes, referring to unclear visions and misunderstandings. While Stolen Tears (2021) subtly refers to legacies of colonialism, the Europemask (2021) represents a kind of blankness of dominant cultural narratives. Cansu Çakar, on the other hand, challenges the stereotypical subjects and classifications in traditional decorative drawing technique. Questioning what it means to be a woman or anyone who feels themselves a woman, or a prisoner in an oppressive regime, her drawings are fictional or based on real-life incidents. Her painting Wash your sins not only your face (2019) is inspired by a fountain mosaic at the entrance of  Hagia Sophia in Istanbul which originally reads as “Nipson anomemata mi monan opsin” (“ΝΙΨΟΝΑΝΟΜΗΜΑΤΑΜΗΜΟΝΑΝΟΨΙΝ”), a Greek palindrome attributed to Gregory of Nazianzus (AD. 329–390). Not only is it related to resistance but the phrase also refers to the two faces of morality, religion, and authority.

In the video works Power Balance (2012) by James Gregory Atkinson and “Körper, Theorie, Poetik” (“Body, Theory, Poetics”) (2018) by Ulf Aminde, both artists have chosen to use their own body in different ways: Atkinson, his own hands and his own voice, and Aminde, his own body and voice in the style of an anonymized video. By engaging their own bodies directly, the works eventually become more personal and fiercer. Atkinson was raised in Germany by his African American father stationed in Germany in the 1980s as a U.S. soldier and his white civilian German mother. Atkinson’s biography illuminates a very distinct and important dimension of American foreign policy in the second half of the 20th century and the involvement of African Americans in those initiatives. In the genre of the conceptual video tradition, his video piece in loop narrates the political resilience and legacies of Black cultures within Western diasporas. In the wake of increasing global far-right terror the simple gesture and the strong juxtaposition of the hands, which represent the Black Power fist and white supremacy salute, question existing and ongoing power structures, using the artist’s body as a tool (This paragraph is developed in conversation with the artist James Gregory Atkinson). Similarly, in his performative film work, Ulf Aminde also deals with power structures and existing systems, first and foremost the institutions. Through the style of an undercover video with darkened body and special effect to alter the voice, the viewer is given the impression that the person talking is involved in an illegal act or for some other reason doesn’t want to be known. In a mysterious way, as this character speaks, it becomes clear that the main question being raised is whether radicality consists of initiating one’s own institutions or whether it is a matter of changing the institutions from the inside. Hanan Benammar, on the other hand, directly responds to the term “desert ideology,” which is used to describe Islamic culture by far-right circles. By naming her installation piece with the same title, Benammar turns the far-right term upside down. In her work, she brings the archival and image materials that she has collected over thirteen years of travels to desert areas into a poetical constellation. Each of the works in the exhibition has its own protest nature and distinctive language of storytelling based on personal experiences or witnesses.

_ Didem Yazıcı

Didem Yazıcı is an independent curator and writer, based in Karlsruhe Germany. Her curatorial work is inspired by thinking across disciplines in and outside of art, the potentiality of exhibitions as socio-poetic spaces, the legacy of intersectional feminism and global exhibition histories. Recently, she worked at the Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe (2017-18) where she co-curated exhibitions, and worked on conceptualizing and realizing the 200th anniversary programme. In 2016, she worked as Curator for the Infra-curatorial Platform of the 11th Shanghai Biennale invited by the curators Raqs Media Collective and Curator-in-residence at the Goethe Institute in Cairo. As a member of the curatorial team of Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg (2015-16), she curated group and solo exhibitions as well as video programs of ‘Schau_Raum’, and co-edited exhibition catalogues. Prior to that, she worked as a freelance curator, and curated the first solo exhibition of Mehtap Baydu in Berlin, titled ‘Tales of Shahmaran’ and a group exhibition ‘Left Unsaid’ in Kreuzberg Pavillon, Berlin in 2014. Previously, she was a curatorial researcher-in-residence at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, and worked at dOCUMENTA (13) as a project coordinator of Maybe Education and Public Programs (2012-13) in Kassel.  In 2009, she was the coordinator of Hafriyat non-profit art space in Istanbul. She studied B.A. in Art History at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Istanbul (2008) and M.A in Curatorial and Critical Studies at the Städelschule and Goethe University in Frankfurt. (2012).

Selected exhibitions and projects include; “Life, Death, Love and Justice” with Peter Sit (Tranzit, Bratislava, spring 2021 upcoming), “Hiding Our Faces Like a Dancing Wind” and “Garden Conversations” (Schau_Raum, Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg, 2020) ‘Ulrika Jäger’ (Akku Stuttgart, 2019), ‘200 Years Young Songs: Mehtap Baydu’ (Badischer Kunstverein, 2018),  ‘Born In The Purple: Viron Erol Vert (Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien Berlin, 2017) ‘Freedom is a State of Mind’ (The 11th Shanghai Biennale, 2016), ‘Freundschaftsspiel,’ (Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg) ‘Middle Of The Path’ (Schau_Raum, Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg, 2015); ‘Towards The Garden of Palms’ (Polistar, Istanbul, 2013); ‘Apparatus Criticus & Locus’ (Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, 2013); ‘Autopoiesis’ (Querungen, Württembergischer Kunstverein, 2013.) ‘Pie In The Sky’ (Platformsarai Frankfurt, 2011).

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Past Continuous https://sumac.space/exhibitions/past-continuous/ Fri, 04 Dec 2020 00:15:43 +0000 https://sumac.space/?post_type=qzr_exhibitions&p=899 Past Continuous—Places of Identity and Dilemmas of the PresentElmira Abdolhassani, Majd Alloush, Parisa Aminolahi, Navid Azimi Sajadi, Nilbar Güreş, Wafa Hourani, Camila SalameCo-curated by Katharina Ehrl and Davood Madadpoor Past Continuous—Places of Identity and Dilemmas of the Present explores the relationship between memory, identity, and the dilemmas of contemporaneity. At the exhibition’s core lies the […]

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Past Continuous—Places of Identity and Dilemmas of the Present
Elmira Abdolhassani, Majd Alloush, Parisa Aminolahi, Navid Azimi Sajadi, Nilbar Güreş, Wafa Hourani, Camila Salame
Co-curated by Katharina Ehrl and Davood Madadpoor

Past Continuous—Places of Identity and Dilemmas of the Present explores the relationship between memory, identity, and the dilemmas of contemporaneity. At the exhibition’s core lies the understanding that memory is integral to how we think about personal and cultural identity. Identity is not fixed or absolute—it is a fluid, continuous, and infinite process. Like the grammatical tense it refers to, Past Continuous implies actions or events that began in the past and persist into the present. The artworks on view are shaped by the past and inextricably tied to the present moment. The participating artists employ and deconstruct different aspects of memory and identity, as well as the histories embedded in them—ranging from “a nostalgic psychological return to the past” to “a self-identity and embodiment of cultural memory” (Hall, 1983, p.393).

Some of the works are playful or carry a mischievous tone, while others draw deeply from heritage and historical reflection to address the complexities of the present and the intricacies of identity. Yet all the works are connected by a strong sense of contemporaneity, challenging and blurring the boundaries between what was and is. The shared thread throughout all three chapters is a critical engagement with history, identity, and collective memory—woven from objects, documents, stories, and lived experiences. The works across the series mark tension and transformation by interrogating and recasting everyday materials and moments, exposing their links to current social and political realities. Beyond acknowledging the historical conditions that have shaped the present, Past Continuous reflects on contemporaneity as a space marked by friction, uncertainty, and constant redefinition.

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Present Continuous https://sumac.space/exhibitions/present-continuous-sumac-space-art-practices-of-the-middle-east/ Sat, 12 Sep 2020 15:24:15 +0000 https://sumac.space/?post_type=qzr_exhibitions&p=115 Present ContinuousBenji Boyadgian, Taha Heydari, Farzaneh Hosseini, Christine Kettaneh, Siavash Naghshbandi, Timo Nasseri, Anahita RazmiCo-curated by Katharina Ehrl and Davood Madadpoor Our history, identity, and collective memory are built upon a collection of objects, documents, stories, and experiences. What connects the works in these three exhibitions is the artistic practice that marks tension by interrogating […]

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Present Continuous
Benji Boyadgian, Taha Heydari, Farzaneh Hosseini, Christine Kettaneh, Siavash Naghshbandi, Timo Nasseri, Anahita Razmi
Co-curated by Katharina Ehrl and Davood Madadpoor

Our history, identity, and collective memory are built upon a collection of objects, documents, stories, and experiences. What connects the works in these three exhibitions is the artistic practice that marks tension by interrogating and recasting everyday objects and events to draw out their relationships to contemporary experience in a landscape of successive social and political change. Apart from the imminent need to consider the historical context from which this current state of affairs has emerged, the chosen works reflect on contemporaneity as a concept that captures the frictions of the present.

Everyday life is a crust of earth over the tunnels and caves of the unconscious and against a skyline of uncertainty and illusion… while overhead stretch the Heavens of Permanence… Henri Lefebvre

Present Continuous emphasizes three aspects that interact with and—partly consciously, partly unconsciously—influence our lives with varying levels of intensity: everyday life, media, and transformation. Thinking about everyday life seems too banal, but contemporaneity, and hence our everyday life, is a mix of origin, transition, and an unknowable future. Media is a major element within society. Its development and social change are related since development has increased the complexity of societal actions and engagements. The exhibited artists work through all these impacts and changes, reflecting and taking up these events, which have become so ordinary for us that we almost classify them as commonplace. Present Continuous is an invitation to pay close attention to the artists’ tireless concern with topics that we know very little about and (mostly) do not actively participate in, which profoundly affect our lives.

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