Past Continuous

Elmira Abdolhassani, b. 1989, Mashhad Iran. Lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal. Majd Alloush, b. 1996, Dubai UAE. Parisa Aminolahi, b. 1978, Tehran, Iran. Lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Navid Azimi Sajadi, b. 1982, Tehran, Iran. Lives and works in Rome, Italy. Nilbar Güreş, b. 1977, Istanbul, Turkey. Lives and works in Vienna. Wafa Hourani, b. 1979, Hebron Palestine. Lives and works between Palestine and Bahrain. Camila Salame, b. 1985 Bogotá Colombia. Lives in Paris, France, and works in Paris, Bogotá, and Beirut. 
Co-curated by Katharina Ehrl and Davood Madadpoor

Memory is at the heart of how most people think about personal identity. (Cultural) identity is not something given, absolute or tangible, but rather a fluid, continuous, and infinite process. 

Like its grammatical form, Past Continuous describes actions or events that started in the past and continue even now; the artworks are simultaneously informed by the past and inherently conjoined with the present. Each of the artworks on display in Past Continuous–Places of Identity and Dilemmas of the Present both employ and deconstruct different aspects of memory and identity and the history associated with them, “from a nostalgic psychological return to the past” to “a self-identity and embodiment of cultural memory” (Hall, 1983, p.393). 

Some works have a sense of playfulness or share a mischievous wink in common, while others draw on history and heritage to reflect on the dilemmas of the present and the places of identity. However, a feeling of contemporaneity links all of the artworks, blurring and dissolving the borders between the past and the present.

Past Continuous–Places of Identity and Dilemmas of the Present is the second of a three-part online exhibition that brings together artists from the Middle East. 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.