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
From the New Works series ©Jawad al Malhi
Jawad al Malhi - New Works
Exhibition: 11 June – 8 July 2010
Mon – Sat, 10:00 – 18:00, at The Delfina Foundation, 29 Catherine Place, London SW1E 6DY
Mon - Fri, 11:00 – 18:00, Sat 11:00 – 16:00, at The Mosaic Rooms, Tower House 226 Cromwell Road, London SW5 0SW
Jawad al Malhi’s work includes painting, photography, video and site-specific work and is preoccupied with the experience of marginalized communities and their relationship to space. Exhibited across two venues in London (The Delfina Foundation and The Mosaic Rooms), his New Works seek to produce alternative representations of Jerusalem, a city whose iconography has been exhausted by tourists and journalists alike.
Combining photography and video and taking archetypal, panoramic sightseeing vistas of Jerusalem as a starting point, Malhi’s large views of the city are held in slowly disintegrating ice. The frozen panels that are exhibited at The Delfina Foundation comment on the stagnant present of a city that once was a centre of cosmopolitan life. They capture Jerusalem’s remaining arteries of life and explore the contrast between the old city and life in the confines of near-by refugee camps.
Jawad al Malhi is a long time resident of Jerusalem. His New Works are intimately connected with his personal memories and evolve from a return to the sites of his childhood. He observes the cacophony of “voice-overs” that are projected onto the occupied city and highlight its somber reality. Caught between a construction ban and accumulating graveyards, Jerusalem gradually collapses under stratums of ideals, ideologies and mortality.
The works on show at The Mosaic Rooms pursue Jawad al Malhi’s exploration of marginal spaces. Since 2007, he has been documenting life in the refugee camps around Jerusalem, nights and days, across the seasons. The resulting body of work highlights the rapid transformation of the landscape prompted by the necessity to accommodate a growing Palestinian refugee population. The panoramic images act as testimonies of dislocation and document, at the margins of Jerusalem, a precarious daily life, paced by immobility and the monotonous potency of waiting.
Related events:
Exhibition Tour: Wednesday 16 June, 18:30, at The Mosaic Rooms. Led by Jawad al Malhi.
Artist talk: Tuesday 29 June, 18:30, at The Delfina Foundation. Jawad al Malhi in conversation with Dr. Tina Sherwell (International Academy of Art, Palestine).
About Jawad al Malhi
Jawad al Malhi was born in Jerusalem in 1969 and lives and works on the border of Shufat refugee camp. He received his MA in Fine Art from the Winchester School of Art, UK. In 2009, he was short-listed for the Frieze Foundation Cartier Award. Recent exhibitions include In the Middle of the Middle (curated by Catherine David at Sfeir-Semier Gallery, Beirut) No Man’s Land? (Gemak, The Hague), the Sharjah Biennal 09 and Palestine c/o Venice (Curated by Salwa Mikdadi, Venice Biennale, 2009). He is nominated for this year’s Prix Pictet and will be showing in Ground Floor America (curated by WHW) at Den Frie in Copenhagen.
De-parcelling model © decolonizing.ps, 2008
Decolonizing Architecture
24 - 27 May 2010
The Delfina Foundation and decolonizing.ps (Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal, Eyal Weizman) are pleased to present the Decolonizing Architecture programme of events, in collaboration with Tate Modern.
Edifices built and used under colonial rule carry the ideologies and power relations, which informed their construction and use. In Bethlehem, Algiers, Johannesburg or Berlin, de-colonizing the architecture of a liberated landscape is necessary to re-envision collective identities based on new geo-political terms. This process encourages both, imaginative and practical planning about the areas that already have or will be released from direct colonial control, opens up an 'arena of speculation' about the future of these sites and the people who inhabit them.
How can the architecture of domination be reused, recycled or re-inhabited by those it dominated? What are the processes involved in planning and implementing the decolonisation of a site? How can one inhabit the house of one’s enemy? This residency programme and series of events will explore some of the ideas that inform the work of Decolonizing Architecture and review case studies spanning the visual arts, architecture and film.
Film screening: Elia Suleiman’s The Time That Remains.
Mon 24 May 2010, Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium, 18:30
£5 (£4 concessions), booking recommended: www.tate.org.uk/modern or 020 7887 8888.
Film introduced by curator and writer Rasha Salti, followed by a Q&A with Elia Suleiman, Eyal Weizman, Sandi Hilal of decolonizing.ps. Moderated by Stuart Comer (Curator, Tate Modern).
More info
Decolonizing Architecture: A panel discussion
Tue 25 May 2010, Tate Modern Starr Auditorium, 18:30 – 21:00
£12 (£10 concessions), booking recommended:www.tate.org.uk/modern or 020 7887 8888.
With Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal, Eyal Weizman of decolonizing.ps, Rasha Salti, Lorenzo Pezzani and Abdoumaliq Simone (Goldsmiths University).
More info
Elastic Spaces: A round table discussion
Thu 27 May 2010, The Delfina Foundation, 18:30 – 20:00
Free event, rsvp required: info@delfinafoundation.com.
Lorenzo Pezzani explores the outcomes of his residency at decolonizing.ps and invites practitioners, researchers and the general audience to explore critical understandings of space.
More information about decolonizing.ps
WORKSPACES
Workspaces
10 - 19 March 2010
A collaboration with Visiting Arts
With participants in Artist-to-artist 2010: Doa Aly, Volkan Aslan, Ali Cherri, Robin Deacon, Delta Arts, Iz Oztat, and the Western Alliance.
What is an artist studio today? Artist-to-artist participants explore ideas around collaboration, mobility and site-specifity in relation to their working environments.
The space where artists work often represents an interface for their professional practice, in which four components play an important role: social architecture, spatial architecture, peer exchange and cultural context. Workspaces proposes to look atartists’ relationships to their working environment, considered both in a spatial and interpersonal sense.
How are artistic workspaces reshaped by international mobility? How does the place where one lives influences one’s practice? Have identification and contextualization remained the main two modes through which artists relate to the place where they live and work? How do international artistic networks alter artists’ perception of their immediate environment? How can we update the late 20th century fantasy of an ultra-mobile artistic community, who envisions the ‘world as its studio’, in the light of a new geo-political and environmental order? How are artistic practices, networks and support structures responding to this change?
Events
Doa Aly in conversation with Eline van der Vlist - CANCELLED
10 March, 19:00 - 20:00
Doa Aly, recent video works
A Tress of Hair (2008) and The Girl Splendid in Walking (2009)
10 - 12 March, 10:00 -18:00
Ali Cherri, recent video works
Un Cercle Autour du Soleil (2005), Slippage (2007) and Untitled (2006)
15 - 17 March, 10:00 -18:00
A dialogue between Ali Cherri and Robin Deacon
16 March, 19:00 - 20:00, Arts Bar & Cafe, Toynbee Studios, 28 Commercial Street, London, E1 6AB
URGENCY / AGENCY: a publication by The Western Alliance, Volkan Aslan & Iz Oztat
Live production day: 18 March, 10:00 - 18:00
Presentation/Performance: 18 March, 18:00 - 20:00
Editions on show: 19 March, 10:00 - 18:00
Notional Studio - round table discussion
Hosted by Emma Smith and Oliver Sumner of Delta Arts, with all Artist-to-artist participants and more.
19 March, 18.30 - 20:00, followed by drinks reception.
All events are taking place at The Delfina Foundation (unless otherwise stated)
All events are free. Limited capacity, early rsvp essential: info@delfinafoundation.com
Visiting Art's Artist-to-artist enables artists from the UK to invite artists from overseas for up to 2 weeks. The selected overseas artist will spend a week with the UK artist, visiting their studio, meeting key contacts, networking and exchanging ideas. More information about Artist-to-artist.
Artists Biographies:
Doa Ali (Egypt) is interested in society's economy of role-play, the use of different types of behaviour and how these vary depending on different situations and contexts. Aly has recently taken part in a number of group shows such as Port City at the Arnolfini Museum, Bristol, UK; Recognise at the Contemporary Art Forum, London, UK; Dessins Projets at l’Appartement 22 in Rabat, Morocco. In 2006 and 2007 she participated in the 7th Dakar Biennial, Senegal; Snap Judgements at the International Center of Photography in New York, and The Maghreb Connection at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève.
Volkan Aslan (Turkey) is an artist and curator, who, in 2008, founded 5533 along with Nancy Atakan and Marcus Graf, an independent space for research, discussion and exhibition of contemporary art. Located in a former shop in Istanbul Textile Trader’s Market, 5533 turns a former business environment into a contact zone where visitors experience various artistic forms in a non exclusive, non-elitist atmosphere.
Ali Cherri (Lebanon) is a graduate in Graphic Design from the American University in Beirut (2000) and completed his Masters in Performing Arts at DasArts (Amsterdam). He designed the stage set for 'Biokhraphia' by Lina Saneh and Rabih Mroué and (2002) and collaborated with Rabih on the installation 'I Feel A Great Desire To Meet The Masses Once Again'. He presented "Give me a body then" (performance, 2005) as part of Diskurs 05, Giessen, Germany and Home Works III, Beirut (2005). His work was screened as part of a Tate Modern 'In Focus', included in 'Out of Beirut', Modern Art Oxford (2006) and 'Fantasy for Allan Kaprow' at Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo, a show that paid homage to Kaprow through a series of re-interpretations.
Robin Deacon (UK) is an artist, writer and filmmaker. His work has included a series of performed lectures that explore journalistic and documentary approaches to arts practice. His works have been presented in the UK and internationally at venues such as; The ICA, London (1996), The Young Vic Theatre (2000), Centre for Contemporary Culture, Barcelona (2006) and Tanzquartier Wein, Vienna (2007). Recent projects include, 'A Portrait of Stuart Sherman' (Film/Installation), Bluecoat Gallery Liverpool (2010) and 'Approximating the Art of Stuart Sherman (Spaghetti Spectacle)', Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery, New York. >
Iz Oztat (Turkey) explores how the notion of “sacred∗” materializes and shapes the body, memory, time and space. In her recent work, she used pre-modern tools and technologies as her departure point to reflect on contemporary processes of social engineering, homogenization and control. Her solo shows include Read/ OKU at PiST, Istanbul (2008), Love It or Leave It, Ohio (2005) and Nothing Disappears Without a Trace, Ohio (2004). Iz is the co-founder of cura bodrum residency in Mugla with Emincan Alemdaroglu, in the context of which she participated in unitednationsplaza, Mexico, Resartis General Meeting, Amsterdam, Prishtina Contemporary Art Library Workshop, Kosovo and Cairo Residency Symposium.
Delta Arts (UK) was formed in 2008, by Emma Smith and Oliver Sumner, as a practice to initiate projects with others. Delta Art’s activities include art practice, interaction and research. Past projects have included rural residentials with young offenders and a mobile allotment project with local residents.
The Western Alliance (UK) is made up of 8 artists / activators who are based in the South-West of England.The Western Alliance is made up of eight artists/activators in the South West. Their current project URGENCY/AGENCY has beeng developed by members Paul Carter, Patrick Lowry, Steven Paige, Alison Sharkey, Oliver Sutherland, Rebecca Weeks and Alexandra Zierle.
N. Rackowe, untitled, 2009, digital print on paper
Nathaniel Rackowe - New works
Nathaniel Rackowe- New works
26 March – 23 April 2010
Mon-Sat, 10:00 – 18:00 at The Delfina Foundation
Artist talk: Nathaniel Rackowe in conversation with Jon Wood (Henry Moore Institute): 8 April 2010, 19:00 - 20:00.
Produced during his residency in Beirut, Nathaniel Rackowe’s new works have developed from his growing appreciation of the architectural forms and structures of the city. His drawings and sculptures cohere to form a visual response to the environment created by modernist architecture, its subsequent failures and the aesthetics of regularity and repetition.
Nathaniel Rackowe’s architectural objects take their cue from the environment which they inhabit. Using motion and a palette of industrial supplies, his sculptures expand on scaffolding poles, asphalt, cinder blocks and corrugated iron as support structures for dazzling light sources. The resulting constructs conceal, as much as they sublime, the light they emit, and inform the legacy of chiaroscuro compositions with the formal vocabulary of industrial regeneration.
Beirut 1-15 is a series of duo-tone drawings with direct associations to changing urban landscapes, and referencing the colours of building works near the artist’s studio in Beirut. It depicts Modernist edifices isolated from any surrounding landscape that would give clues to their origins, inhabitants or use. The works evoke the dysfunction of vast, abandoned urban spaces, as the housing sites represented are darkened by the absence of life and the debris of passing time.
The deep blue corrugated roofing sheets that enwraps LP25 (Beirut) is common in both construction and temporary sheltering. The exterior surface and color dominate the piece, although its interior activity is also clearly visible, as light sources reveal the life within and the structure of the shell. With LP25 (Beirut), Nathaniel Rackowe directs our attention to architecture, its ability to structure human actions and interactions. In these new works, Beirut and its connotations of failed utopianism provide context for Nathaniel’s ongoing exploration of the impossible space between the ideal and the built city.
Biographies
Nathaniel Rackowe (b. 1977) graduated from the Slade with a MFA in Sculpture. Since his graduation, Nathaniel has exhibited his work internationally including the ICA (London), The Economist Plaza (Contemporary Art Society, Bischoff/Weiss (London), Galerie Almine Rech (Paris), and Baibakov Art Projects (Moscow). Nathaniel has recently completed a Delfina Foundation residency in Beirut, Lebanon.
Jon Wood works at the Henry Moore institute, where he coordinates the academic research programme and curates exhibitions.
More information: www.rackowe.com
Rana Begum, No 207 (detail), 2010, drinking straws
Rana Begum - New Works
Rana Begum - New works
5 February - 02 March 2010, Mon-Sat, 10:00 – 18:00
Initiated during her residency in Beirut, No.207 (2010) vigorously pursues the artistic potency of line and colour; whilst exploring the possibility of reducing complex elements to their vital parts.
Extracting banal hardware from its utilitarian context, Begum limited her materials to commercially available drinking straws, in five standard colors (fluorescent green, yellow, pink, orange and black). Composed entirely of glowing lines, the resulting modular superstructure demonstrates the generative potential of Begum’s systematic application of the limited vocabulary of commercially available fluorescent materials.
No.207 is rooted in Rana’s observation of the urban milieu, the aesthetic possibilities of the city and the implications of architectural modernism. Renewing her commitment to serial and rational forms and their subsequent emphasis of phenomenological strategies, Rana’s work sets out to transform the overpowering associations of urban debasement into poetic entities: No.207’s fluorescent colors evoke Beirut’s buzzing night scene, and the convoluted modular shapes recall the chaotic maze of a metropolis.
Dealing with architectural propositions as much as with the formal possibilities of Minimalism, No.207 is an attempt to condense the urban experience to its most significant elements, to abstract analogous visual stimuli and subsequently articulate them into concrete forms and lights. Feeding on the architecture of a space, cutting lines across and reorganising it according to abstract cartographies, No.207 draws powerful associations between culture, architecture and design, and reinvents our relationship to artificial spaces.
Rana Begum (b. 1977) graduated from the Slade with a MFA in Painting. She has exhibited her work internationally including Jerwood Space (London), The City Gallery (Leicester), BU Gallery (Bangkok) & The Third Line (Dubai), and has a forthcoming solo show at Bischoff/Weiss (London). Rana has recently completed a Delfina Foundation residency in Beirut, Lebanon.
Artist Talk: Rana Begum in conversation with Charles Danby
17 February 2010, 19:00 - 20:00
Charles Danby is a writer and curator based in London. He is a co-founder of PROJECKT, a curatorial research partnership that considers new media technologies through broadcast and live event. He is a guest curator at the Siobhan Davies Studios, London, and is the 2010 curator at Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium in Norway. Charles has written for international arts publications including Flash Art, Frieze, Art Issue and Art Review.
Limited seats available, early rsvp essential: rsvp@delfinafoundation.com