Nefertiti - Ala Younis

Exhibition

Nefertiti  - Ala Younis 

(Video installation, 2008)

15 – 27 January 2010, Mon-Fri, 10:00 – 18:00
Artist Talk: 19 January 2010, 19:00 - 20:00

“Whatever we’ve invested in industry, we have found returns for the industry[...]. Products that allow us to not import from abroad. If it were not for everything we have invested in industry, I do not know what we would be doing right now.”

Gamal Abdel Nasser, 1967

Produced and sold in Egypt after the 1952 revolution, the Nefertiti sewing machine was part of the Egyptian government’s attempt to nationalize the country’s industrial production, from domestic appliances to military warfare, and to create productive symbols of Egyptian sovereignty. The curvaceous machine was introduced to Egyptian homes with the intention of empowering women while keeping them at home, during times of war. It suffered significant design flaws, which contributed to the decline of its popularity among Egyptian households. As it failed to compete with imported models, the production of Nefertiti machines was eventually discontinued, shortly after the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Ala Younis’s video installation features two of the original machines, displayed on white pedestals, in a museum-like style, which recalls the scenery of archaeological displays. The accompanying 12-minute video narrates the history of the sewing machine, the personal accounts of those who used it, and reflects on the hopes and aspirations of Egypt and the Arab world, in the heyday of the independence.

In this video archaeology, the Nefertiti sewing machine resonates as a nostalgic symbol of hope, national pride and loyalty. It also functions as a reminder of aborted promises of progress and modernity, and of a disheartening ideological disappointment with older generations. Nefertiti questions our relationship to consumer products and the myths that surround them. Looking back at a time when industrial processes held critical economic, social and political significance, it explores the links between consumerism, national identities and the formation of political ideologies.

Ala Younis (b. 1974) has exhibited internationally, including Darat Al Funun, The Jerusalem Show and the Townhouse Gallery. She lives and works in Amman, Jordan and is a current resident artist at The Delfina Foundation, with the support of the British Council - Creative Collaboration. Nefertiti was commissioned by PhotoCairo 4: The Long Shortcut, in the context of the Digital Residencies. She currently lives and works in Amman, Jordan.

4 videos by Lamia Joreige at The Delfina Foundation

Four videos by Lamia Joreige
23 November to 4 December 2009
Mon-Sat, 10:00 - 18:00

Visual artist and filmmaker Lamia Joreige uses archival documents and fictitious elements to reflect on the relation between individual stories and collective history. Her work explores the possibilities of representing the Lebanese wars and their aftermath, using Beirut as the centre of her imagery. 

Four videos by Lamia Joreige will be on view at The Delfina Foundation, from 23 November to 4 December 2009 (Mon-Sat, 10:00 - 18:00)

Replay Bis (2002, 9min, video and super 8)
The starting point of Replay Bis is the idea of rupture in a time and place that are undefined. The story, which might have been experienced or dreamt, is repeated in various formats. Images appear as reminiscences of the past as well as attempts to reconstruct a narrative.

Here and Perhaps Elsewhere (2003, 54min, video)
Countless individuals disappeared during the Lebanese civil war. In most cases, the bodies were never found and the circumstances of their disappearance unknown. Traveling through Beirut and asking the inhabitants one same question "Do you know of anyone who was kidnapped here during the war?"), Lamia Joreige attempts to trigger the process of memory and reveal the multiplicity of existing discourses on the war.

A Journey (2006, 41min, video)
A Journey follows Lamia's grandmother Rose, as her personal story meets the collective history of the Middle East. Aternating documents, interviews and voice over, A Journey triggers a reflection on history and the conflict in this region, as well as exploring notions of time, disappearance and loss.

Nights and Days (2007, 17min, video)
Nights and Days uses filmed and written notes of summer 2006, to recount the experience of the war in a personal way, question the relationship between image and sound, and explore notions of 'beauty' and 'horror'.

Lamia Joreige is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Beirut, Lebanon. She has shown her work internationally including the 52nd Venice Biennale, ICP New-York, and Modern Art Oxford. In 2009, she co-founded the Beirut Art Centre, a non-profit association, space and platform dedicated to contemporary art in Lebanon.

Morphospace

Morphospace
Tobias Collier
30 October - 13 November 2009
Artist talk: Modelling the Universe
1 November 2009 14:00 – 15:00 (please note the change in time)
Astronomy Centre, Royal Observatory Greenwich

All works shown in Morphospace were produced during Tobias Collier’s residency in Damascus, Syria (2009).

Tobias Collier’s work can be seen as an attempt to visually articulate a great epistemological challenge: that of the human mind encountering the intellectually imponderable. Encompassing elements of sculpture, installation, drawing, performance and video, Tobias Collier’s practice partly relies upon the translation of scientific research methodologies to the processes of art making. Using Art as their field of enquiry, the subsequent works function as mechanisms within the context of a research practice and present a unique combination of scientific processes with poetic artistry.

Playing with current ideas around Astronomy and Cosmology, Tobias Collier’s quotidian metaphors examine our cultural relationship to outer space, using objects of daily existence. They highlight the limitations and inadequacy of man-made processes such as logic (modelling, hypothesizing, inferring and inducing), analogies and metaphors when attempting to comprehend systems and structures that extend beyond our everyday experience.

Bifurcation Chair (2009) explores notions around unpredictable change and chaos. The sculpture suggests the process of change from one stable state, to another, through a realm of complex transformations and interactions, eventually resulting in regained harmony.

The Conflict between Belief and Reason  (2009) features a globe, a crystal ball, and a deflated balloon upon which the one-legged fragment of a table rests. Creating a symbiosis between scientific explanations and religious discourses on the origins of the universe, this unstable system, caught in a moment of seemingly impossible equilibrium, highlights our propensity to rely on structures of faith to organize our experience of the world.

In Untitled (2009), what looks like a traveling shot of a star-studded sky is, in fact, a single tracking shot documenting the holes in the ceiling of one of the largest souks, in the old city of Damascus. According to popular belief, these holes were caused by gunshots during the 1920s protests against the French mandate. The accompanying soundtrack is a recording of the noises and background voices of the souk’s thousands of daily visitors. Exploring the conflict between the sacred and the profane, positioning that tension at the core of human experience and frustration, the video is an abstract of our relationship to faith against diverging evidence. It ultimately suggests that art is perhaps an avatar of that condition.

Tobias Collier (b.1972) graduated from Saint Martins School of Art in 1999. His first solo exhibition was at the VTO Gallery in 1999, and since then he has exhibited regularly both in the UK and abroad including shows at Steven Friedman Gallery, Lisson Gallery, the Royal Academy, HDK Munich and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Tobias was an international resident in Damascus, Syria, in collaboration with All Art Now and the Mustafa Ali Art Foundation. He currently lives and works in London. 

A collaboration with the Royal Observatory, Greenwich

The Knowledge Stop 1 - Damascus

The Knowledge
Stop 1 - Damascus
1 - 8 October 2009

Collapse (work-in-progress)

Collapse (work-in-progress)
B. Abbas and R. Abou-Rahme
22 July to 7 August 2009, Mon-Fri, 10:00-18:00

Collapse is a sound and video installation, which uses as its starting point an assemblage of audio and film archive material. The compiled footage brings together imaginary and actual moments of resistance and loss, and highlights the disruptions that shape shared histories of struggle, in Palestine and elsewhere. 

Somewhere between reality and fiction, absence and presence, nostalgia and deja-vu, the installation explores an anxious and obsessive state of being, a fractional condition obscured by repetition, forgetfulness and the subsequent feelings of impotence and frustration. A fragmented, anachronic and a-temporal dialogue ensues, set to a soundscape sourced from news footage, archive material and field recordings.

Collapse questions an incomplete memory ‘made-to-forget’, and eradicated right before its transition from present to past.  The installation embodies the artists’ attempt to trace the a-historical momentum, which leads to a general breakdown, and to gather the fragments that were left behind, whilst making visible the disjuncture of the present.
 

Basel Abbas (sound artist and musician) and Ruanne Abou-Rahme (film and video) have collaborated on numerous projects, including Ramallah Syndrome (53rd Venice Biennale, with Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal). They are current international artists-in-residence at The Delfina Foundation. 

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