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14/3/2015

Beyond History

Framer Framed, Amsterdam

Curated by Elham Puriyamehr and Robert Kluijver

The trilogy Crisis of History explores the post-history landscape in the Middle East and beyond. In its final chapter, Beyond History, the "great historical narrative" on the region is being examined. The artists participating in the exhibition seek to poke holes in the grand historical narrative. They resist the tendency to uniformity by proposing new cultural forms, mixing old and new, fiction and reality, East and West in surprising yet compelling ways.

Beyond History takes as its departure point the crumbling of a supposed universal historical narrative. Within a plurality of possibilities for future narrations, Beyond History focuses on differences and similarities in historical stories considerably stemming from the Persian Gulf region, and Iran and Saudi Arabia in particular.

Robert Kluijver: "On the other side of the Persian Gulf, Arabian artists are discovering a rich pre-Islamic history, which is being hidden for reasons of religious ideology and political convenience. Often working from little-known archives and long-forgotten artefacts, which segues between real and fabricated narratives."

Elham Puriyamehr: "Artists in Iran must deal with two great historical narratives: those introduced by foreign powers and local institutions. Both may already be bankrupt, as they offer no alternatives from the polarized world orders. They respond by creating alternative histories, role reversals and stories in between. The artists seek, stretch and ultimately fracture the boundaries of a discourse, which considers itself to be universal."

Babak Golkar
Babak Golkar (b. 1977) grew up in Tehran and immigrated to Vancouver at the age of 19. "As many Iranians from my generation, I grew up in the war time. I'm not a journalist wanting to show reality in a direct way. As an artist I have an obligation to examine subjects from a personal and subjective point." An underlying current in Golkar's work is the inquiry into the individual's compromise and negotiation when faced with the suppression and emotional distress of contemporary human conditions. For his recent solo exhibition Dialectic of failure, he presented a series of abject-looking terracotta scream pots, available for the visitors of the West Vancouver Museum to scream into. Beyond History features Golkar's video installation titled Throw(n) (2014), in which blobs of potter's clay are artfully thrown against a clean white wall. Ample clay is available for the spectators to participate in throwing blobs on the wall where the video is projected.

Slavs and Tatars
Slavs and Tatars is an art collective founded in 2005. Slavs and Tatars is a faction devoted to an area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia—often focusing on a sphere of influence between Slavs, Caucasians and Central Asians. Core to their interests are geopolitical issues of identity, language and territorial disputes. The group has traveled throughout the region exploring the region's historical narratives and transnational relationships; the collective uses an unconventional research-based approach and designs wildly different projects to relay their findings, combining high and low culture in the process.

Slavs and Tatars have exhibited extensively worldwide including solo presentations Beyonsense, MoMA, New York; Not Moscow Not Mecca, Secession, Vienna; Friendship of Nations, KIOSK, Ghent; Kidnapping Mountains, Netwerk Allast, Belgium. Their work has also been presented in Love Me Love Me Not, Venice Biennale (2013); Nouvelles Vagues, Palais de Tokyo (2013); I decided not to save the world, Tate Modern (2011); and 10th Sharjah Biennale (2011).

Image: Babak Golkar, Throw(n), 2014. Video projection and audience participation. Installation view, Sazmanab - Ab/Anbar Center for Contemporary Art, Tehran, 2014.

Opening: March 15th, 17.00

Framer Framed in de Tolhuistuin
IJpromenade 2
Amsterdam
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday 14–22h

Admission free

stampa

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