Artists are invited to explore themes of relevance to the global remit of our activities, whilst addressing the local context of our focus areas. We produce exhibitions, talks, commissions and collaborations, showcasing global creativity to our UK-based audience.
Archive of events
KHRP Exhibition
12 December 2007
Ed Kashi, Zbigniew Kosc, Susan meiselas, Patrick Robert, Olivia Arthur, Olivia Heussler, Eddy van Wessel, Tom Carrigan, Kevin McKiernan
The land known as Kurdistan presently comprises parts of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Armenia. It is a land of stark beauty but also one engulfed in conflict.
The works exhibited as part of KHRP exemplified the recurring tension between the photographer’s need to “objectively” document, record histories and the overwhelming urge to capture, above the political and ideological, the land of sheer beauty and majesty that is the Kurdish region. The unsettled relationship between fine art and documentary, and the role of the photographer in shifting the boundaries between these clearly established genres, is highlighted by the nature of the Kurdish experience: how can one photograph this land without conjuring reminiscences of the Kurdish narrative of struggle and resistance, from Saddam Hussein’s Anfal Campaign to the street of Halabja?
How to represent a collective narrative punctuated by war without overlooking personal experiences, and reducing them to the status of cultural, or political victims?
Time and time again Kurdish intellectuals, artists and ordinary people have stated how they do not wish to be defined merely by the narrative of struggle and resistance. They refuse to be bound by the prison wall, the statute book, or even the human rights report, challenging to the documentary photographer to negociate the balance between the personal and the political, in each of his/her snapshots.
This exhibition is accompanied by a book, to be jointly published by the Kurdish Human Rights Project and The Delfina Foundation in 2008.
Sonia Boyce - Double Bill
Sunday 9 December 2007
Sonia Boyce presents a double bill of Jacques Tourneur’s 1943 B-movie I Walked with a Zombie, and her stunning new work Crop Over commissioned by the Harewood House.
Crop Over began with Boyce’s interest in the Crop Over festival in Barbados, a harvest festival that directly originates out of the conditions of plantation life and sugar production in the Caribbean. Crop Over also responds directly to the history of Harewood House and its relationship to the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Crop Over is a project by Sonia Boyce and was commissioned by Harewood House Trust and the National Art Gallery Committee, Barbados, with financial support from the Arts Council of England and the Prime Minister’s Office, Barbados.
This event was part of the Delfina Studio Trust Artist-Alumni series.