Press
“Morning. Vast. Imprecision. Fog has covered everything in gray absolute. This has lasted. Doubts loom over the mind. Absence is harder to accept than death.” —Etel Adnan, Sea and Fog (2012)
On November 11, 1918, at five o’clock in the morning, the ceasefire was signed in a forest clearing near Compiègne, France, marking the end of four long years of the First World War. This war left its mark on all the subsequent ones, influencing warfare and militarism in terms of scale, technology, strategy, damage, and violence. Since then, the wars of one region have spread their political, social, economic, and psychological effects across the globe. One hundred six years after the end of this deadly war, the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden presents the group exhibition Sea and Fog, inspired by the book of the same name by the artist and poet Etel Adnan (1925–2021). The exhibition reveals the multi-layered geographical and cultural interrelations that extend far beyond artificially drawn borders, nation-states, and geopolitics by examining the history of the World Wars and their impact on the ongoing wars.
"A retrospective in Paris honors Lina Majdalanie and Rabih Mroué, whose theater works have examined the region’s troubles for decades."
"This fall and winter, the Lebanese theater maker and visual artist Rabih Mroué and his partner, the actress, director, and playwright Lina Majdalanie, will present a series of plays and nonacademic lectures as part of Paris’s annual Festival d’Automne. A major retrospective, the program includes many of Mroué’s cult-favorite performances, like Who’s Afraid of Representation? and The Inhabitants of Images. Playing host to the stage-related dimensions of his practice, the festival’s presentation will focus on Mroué’s extended engagement with language."
"On the occasion of Tarik Kiswanson’s exhibition A Century at Portikus, Frankfurt, he sat down with artist Asad Raza—who also had a solo show, Diversion, at the same venue in 20221—for a rich conversation that reveals the intertwined nature of their artistic practices and philosophical outlooks. Fresh off a plane from New York, Kiswanson reflects on his recent work and the meaningful collaborations that have shaped it. In a dialogue spanning from Edward Said to Édouard Glissant, Kiswanson and Raza exchange ideas about art at the intersection of space and identity. They discuss embracing medium fluidity, the importance of allowing research to go beyond language and acceptance of the unknown in seeking to articulate the complexities of human existence in present reality."
"“Another exhibition at another foreboding historical moment” says the invitation card to Walid Raad’s exhibitions at Sfeir-Semler galleries in Karantina and Downtown. Raad’s artworks have time and again engaged such moments and what they make evident, possible, probable, thinkable, sayable, and imaginable."
"At the Biennale, Wael Shawky represented his country with a lush retelling of a failed revolution that offers hope in a troubled political landscape."
"In January, Al Jazeera English aired a segment with a sound analyst named Lawrence Abu Hamdan. He was asked to assess a video that had gone viral online. In the clip, a woman wearing a hijab claimed to be a nurse at a hospital in Gaza. She said that Hamas was attacking the hospital and ransacking its supplies. The sound of bombs could be heard in the background..."
"A second show at the Migros, Dineo Seshee Raisibe Bopape’s “(ka) pheko ye – the dream to come,” subverts this construction of home by bringing to the museum the very real conditions of Bopape’s native South Africa through clay display structures that echo the front yards in which people congregate, work, and socialize."
"Poesie kann auch aus vier Spazierstöcken bestehen: Der Duchamp-Preisträger Tarik Kiswanson stellt im Frankfurter Portikus aus."
"But this booth’s true stars were ceramic versions of grotesque masks that Wael Shawky has featured in his films, which have dealt with topics ranging from the Crusader invasions of Egypt in the 12th century to the country’s nationalist Urabi revolution against imperial influence during the 19th century..."
"Marwan Rechmaoui’s latest body of work includes paintings of popsicles and bags of pink cotton candy. There are poppies, fluffy clouds, a pretty sun, and a full moon. The perfectly green crowns of seven parasol pine trees fill one robust frame while the bushy derrieres of three sheep fill another. Among the objects scattered throughout “Chasing the Sun,” on view in the Sfeir-Semler Gallery’s newish project space located in Downtown Beirut near the mouth of the port, are streamers, a kite, marbles, the outlines of a hopscotch game, and boards for checkers and tic-tac-toe. Knowing the artist’s previous work, one could be forgiven for thinking he’d lost the plot here, or at least wandered off toward divertissement. And yet the toys and games of the current show clarify the importance of play and playfulness in Rechmaoui’s larger project..."
"Wael Shawky has brought a bold musical film to the Egyptian Pavilion. In Drama 1882, the Alexandria-born artist creates a parable confronting history’s grip on the present.
Set against the backdrop of occupation in Egypt, the film delves into the nationalist fervor of the 1879–82 Urabi Revolution. The violent peasant uprising against the Egyptian monarch’s susceptibility to imperial influence eventually backfired and became a catalyst for British rule, which lasted until 1956."
"Depending on who you ask, the Phoenician princess Europa was either wooed or assaulted by the Greek god Zeus, who became her lover after disguising himself as a bull. Lebanon’s representative, Monira Al Solh, seems to view Europa’s seduction as nonconsensual. Take one painting in Al Solh’s expansive installation A Dance with Her Myth (2024) showing a bound-up figure of ambiguous gender identity beside a bull on its back. Whatever is happening here, it isn’t pleasant. But Al Solh, keen to complicate the mythology surrounding Europa, never portrays this princess as a victim."
"Through an impressive range of 41 pieces, including sculptures, drawings, paintings, embroidery, and video, Al Solh focuses on the ancient Phoenician character of Europa and rewrites her narrative of domination by reimagining her as a powerful protagonist. Painted canvases hanging from the ceiling depict Europa engaging with her abductor, the bull (Zeus). In the paintings, Europa is pregnant with the bull standing at her side, connected to the bull with an umbilical cord, or even morphing into the bull herself."
‘The woman lies on her back, feet in the air. She lazily spins an urn, balanced on her hands, containing a bull’s head. During the 12-minute film in which the bull-twirling goddess appears, a haphazard narrative emerges out of images — many of them animated drawings which boast a frail, enchanting quirkiness — that include lapping waves, dancers in antique robes and onions which weep purple ink. Lines from a poem flash intermittently: “I looked for a magnificent white bull . . . but all I found was a goat.” “I looked for Europa passively carried . . . she held him in a jar.”‘