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IDENTITY
BLUFFS
Sara Blokland, Bruno
Boudjelal, Mahmoud Khaled, Lucia Nimcova, Nii Obodai
February 13 - March 27,
2011
Opening: Saturday February 12,
5-7
p.m.
‘Identity bluffs’ is the second exhibition to take place in the
framework of Project 1975. Bringing together works mostly based on photography
and video, the exhibition sheds light on the ways in which migratory processes
related to globalisation affect the featured artists’
practices.
The increased mobility of information and people today has altered the modes in
which contemporary subjects form their images of themselves and of others. An
interest in the continuous formation of identities is the thread connecting the
works displayed here. The participating artists present multilayered (self-)
portraits of individuals who grew up in European or African nation states, which
nowadays seem to have difficulty formulating appropriate political responses to
contemporary migratory processes, perhaps partly due to the fact that in these
states colonial mindsets still prevail. ‘Identity bluffs’ undermines
fantasies that reduce people to fixed types, and at the same time acts as a
platform for nuanced and multifaceted views on the complexities of life under
post-colonial
conditions.
The exhibition includes Bruno
Boudjelal’s video installation Disquiet Days, a compilation of
photographs taken in Algeria over a period of ten years during the
artist’s visits to his father’s home country. With his camera
Boudjelal sketches unparalleled scenes of Algerian life and its city- and
landscapes, often in a colour scale that is reminiscent of early expressionist
painting. The exhibition also includes Mahmoud Khaled’s This Show is
My Business, a video recording of an interview with a male belly-dancer
living in London, who talks about his artistic practice in a cultural setting
where oriental dance is generally not regarded as a high form of cultural
practice.
Read more...
(Illustration: Lucia Nimcova,
African Thunderstorm,
2011)
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