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22/10/2010

Unfixed

Centrum Beeldende Kunst, Dordrecht

Curated by Sara Blokland and Asmara Pelupessy
Organized by UNFIXED Projects (a nonprofit organization) and the Center for Contemporary Art, Dordrecht, the Netherlands

Artists and Speakers:
Charif Benhelima (BE)
Otobong Nkanga (NG/FR)
Keith Piper (UK)
Naro Snackey (NL)
Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie (US)
Hank Willis Thomas (US)
Kobena Mercer (UK)

UNFIXED explores the elusive nature of photographic truth and its relationship to notions of ethnicity, culture and identity in contemporary art. Through both an exhibition and a symposium, UNFIXED brings together a group of international artists and theorists with personal relations to migration, colonial history and cultural diaspora. These thinkers and practitioners research and reflect upon photographic histories as they construct new ones. UNFIXED engages the visual approaches and strategies of the exhibited works as points of departure for critical and productive consideration, aiming to contribute to the Netherlands’ relatively young discourse about postcolonialism’s relevance to photography. In the same fashion as many of the participants, the project hopes to blur the lines between art practice, scholarly research and cultural activism.

The exhibition features the work of artists Charif Benhelima (BE), Otobong Nkanga (NG/FR), Keith Piper (UK), Naro Snackey (NL), Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie (US) and Hank Willis Thomas (US). The simultaneously manipulative and elusive nature of photography plays an important role in the work of each of these artists and the approaches they take on issues relevant to postcolonialism.

Native American artist Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie’s work is guided by strong advocacy for visual sovereignty. As in her series Portraits Against Amnesia (2003), the blend of digital and manual collage reposition photographic portraits beyond traditional or official positions, reclaiming sovereignty over self-representation. With his two related series, Branded (2003-2008) and Unbranded (2005-2008), American artist Hank Willis Thomas makes sharp political and social comment on a history of representation of African Americans. Thomas utilizes the flat photographic language of modern advertising and subverts the original commercial intent by either adding imagery or deleting text, revealing and focusing attention to the commodification of African American culture and bodies. UNFIXED will be the first time the work of Thomas and Tsinhnahjinnie is exhibited in Netherlands.

Dutch artist Naro Snackey’s installation, developed especially for UNFIXED, expresses the fragility of history. Snackey appropriates photographs from genealogical websites as the base for life size three-dimensional reconstructions. These sculptures explore notions of familiarity, strangeness, migration and Snackey’s Indonesian heritage. Nigerian born artist, Otobong Nkanga, explores performative and associative aspects of photography, reflecting on notions of memory and space. In her work, Alterscapes (2006), Nkanaga places herself within the photographic frame. And in a first time restaging of the work Dream in One Meter Square (originally from 2004-2005) she invites viewers to contribute their own interpretations directly onto and into the work, incorporating their own memories into the present.

Within the work of Belgian artist Charif Benhelima, image as memory becomes nearly invisible. In the installation Semites (2003-2005), a series of overexposed Polaroids of re-photographed (family) portraits, Benhelima creates a poetic visual abstraction in which he questions his origin and identity. British artist Keith Piper has used photography to re-collect representational memories and objects from Britain’s anthropological and colonial histories. UNFIXED includes a piece of Piper’s groundbreaking interactive digital work and the ‘cut and mix’ video Go West Young Man (1997), both of which are indicative of his continuous restaging of historical (systems of) information and critique of Western political attitudes towards their own colonial histories.

UNFIXED SYMPOSIUM 16 November 2010

The symposium will explore photography’s relationship to changing notions of cultural histories, identities and representations. The day will include lectures and presentations from each of the artists exhibited, all of whom actively incorporate research and theory into their conceptual practice. Along with their art practice, members of this diverse group also sideline as lecturers, writers, performers and cultural critics. Their presentations will address the strategies, motives and histories of photography embedded in their work. In addition, Pamela Pattynama, Professor of Colonial and Postcolonial Literature and Cultural History at the University of Amsterdam, will present her research on the visual history of the Indo-Dutch community in the Netherlands. Dutch photographer, Andrea Stultiens, will reflect on her project The Kaddu Wasswa Archive, a visual biography telling the story of 78 year old Kaddu Wasswa John’s life in Uganda through his own personal archive. UNFIXED will host a conversation between Stultiens and her collaborators, Kaddu Wasswa John himself, and his grandson Arthur C. Kisitu, both visiting from Uganda.

Art historian and critic Kobena Mercer will present the keynote lecture, discussing photography and the colonial conditions of cross cultural modernity. Mercer will offer a critical account of the often vexed relation between photographic theory and postcolonial studies. Born in Ghana in 1960 Mercer is the author of landmark texts in visual culture and has an international research profile in cultural studies. Since his first book, Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies (1994), Mercer has contributed to catalogues such as AfroModern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic (2010), authored a number of monographs and was the series editor of Annotating Art’s Histories, whose titles include Cosmopolitan Modernisms (2005) and Exiles, Diasporas & Strangers (2008), along with contributing articles to frieze, Artforum International and Camera Austria.

UNFIXED is made possible through support from the Mondriaan Foundation, the Netherlands Fund for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture and the City of Dordrecht.

For more information, appointments for interviews, visuals please contact the curators:
+31 (0)6 15542931 Sara Blokland
+31 (0)6 22142028 Asmara Pelupessy
unfixedprojects@gmail.com

Opening Saturday, 23 October 17

Center for Contemporary Art
Voorstraat 180, 3311 ES Dordrecht
Opening hours: Wed-Sat 12-17

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