A video art exhibition in Lissone explores today's issues with works by the Han Nefkens Foundation

At the Edge of Identity, Contemporary Videoart from the Han Nefkens Foundation, is an exhibition of video works conceived and curated by Giacomo Zaza for the MAC - Museum of Contemporary Art in Lissone (MB). The exhibition project is open to the public until Nov. 24 at MAC.

The exhibition presents works that address the theme of intercultural identity. Social, ethnic and gender issues invite a reflection that places the human being at the center of the transformation processes taking place in the contemporary world. Fifteen artists from different places in the world - the West, the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Middle East - propose sociological and cultural considerations from different points of view, through heterogeneous narrative languages.

The works are selected from the collection of the Han Nefkens Foundation in Barcelona and the Premio de Producción de Video Arte Fundación Han Nefkens - CAC Quito 2018.

The exhibition is documented in a bilingual (Italian and English) catalog published by Silvana Editoriale, an international publishing house, and will be distributed in Italy and abroad by December 2019.

The curatorial project was previewed at MUST in Lecce thanks to the support of UBI Banca and the interest of theCultural Department of the City of Lecce.

At the Edges of Identity is an exhibition event that testifies to the extent to which contemporary artistic research is involved in the cultural and social debate concerning the conditions of existence in the globalized world. The artists involved present reflections from personal and cultural points of view sometimes very distant from each other, with dissimilar and varied narrative and expressive strategies. From this excursus of video-narratives we get the urgency of placing the human being at the center of an investigation that involves the processes of identification and belonging, of identifying differences, of recognizing otherness. Being at the edges, as the title of the group show suggests, alludes to that condition of fluidity in which individual definition is realized through relationships of confrontation and negotiation with the neighbor or the different. The videos in the exhibition indicate, from a positivist perspective, the direction of interculturality as a constructive matrix of man’s path of emancipation, a path perpetually in the making.

The issue of women’s oppression inISIS war territories is addressed with a documentary gaze by Erkan Özgen ’s(Derik, Turkey, 1971) video Purple Muslin (2018). Shirin Neshat(Qazvin, Iran, 1957) in Tooba (2002) proposes, through the allegory of a tree, the resolution of tensions between men and women through the transcendent and spiritual dimension. Maya Watanabe(Lima, Peru, 1983) in the video Liminal (2019) focuses on the genocides that took place in Peru, dealing with mourning not only as personal grief, but also as an experience of collectivity. Arash Nassiri(Tehran, 1986) in Tehran-geles (2014) reveals to us, surrealistically superimposing the cities of Tehran and Los Angeles, the urgencies that move thousands of people to migration. Also dwelling on the dynamics of migration are Ramin Haerizadeh (Tehran, 1975), Rokni Haerizadeh (Tehran, 1978), and Hesam Rahmanian(Knoxville, 1980) with From Sea to Dawn (2016-2017); the video is a collage of images taken from the media and reworked with pictorial interventions that refers to the odyssey of travel. Bárbara Sánchez Barroso(Lleida, Spain, 1987) in Paradise (2017) superimposes the voice recordings of a migrant on images with symbolic value: the man is willing to pay with the loss of his own certainties of values in favor of the hope of individual freedom. The theme of freedom is also addressed by Zwelethu Mthethwa(Durban, South Africa, 1960) in Flex (2002) through the metaphor of exertion and physicality, while the Soviet communist utopia is the subject of the intimate and biographical video Disappearance of a Tribe (2005) by Deimantas Narkevičius(Utena, Lithuania, 1964). Social issues are the subjects of the works of Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook ’s(Trad, Thailand, 1957) Village Kid Singing (2004), on the plight of HIV status in Thailand, and Gabriel Mascaro ’s(Recife, Brazil, 1983) EBB AND FLOW (A Onda Trás o Vento Leva) (2012), on physical disability in Brazilian society.

An in-depth look at Latin American video art is offered by a selection of works from the 2018 edition of the Premio de Producción de Video Arte Fundación Han Nefkens - CAC Quito 2018. Five artists of Latin American nationality or origin testify to the vibrancy of this cultural background. Adrián Balseca(Quito, Ecuador, 1989) in Mar Cerrado (2016) constructs a reflection on the exploitation of extractive resources by comparing them to Ecuador’s patriotic and monumental icons. Javier Castro(La Habana, Cuba, 1984) with La Edad de Oro (2012) dismantles the rhetoric of the universality of human values by bringing back the imaginative and naive responses of Cuban children to the question of what they would like to be when they grow up. Jonathas de Andrade(Maceió, Alagoas, Brazil, 1982) also intervenes on changes in shared social values; in the video O Levante (2014), the artist organizes a horse race for cinematic purposes to circumvent the ban imposed in the city of Racife on the movement of rural animals. Of self-referential impact is the work of Luis Gómez Armenteros (La Habana, Cuba, 1968), in Life from the Spinning Washing Machine (2012) a stop-motion sequence of images of his own face create a visionary alteration in which the distinction between fiction and reality becomes imperceptible. Beatriz Santiago Muñoz(San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1972) in Otros Usos (2014) analyzes the effects of postcolonialism on the landscape of Caribbean territories.

For all information you can call +39 039 7397368, email museo@comune.lissone.mb.it or visit www.museolissone.it.

Pictured: Shirin Neshat, Tooba (2002), image from the film. Ph credit: Shirin Neshat / Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels; Han Nefkens Foundation, Barcelona

Source: release

A video art exhibition in Lissone explores today's issues with works by the Han Nefkens Foundation

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