'Still I Rise': Feminisms, Gender and Resistance, exhibition's 3rd Act at the Arnolfini

The Arnolfini gallery is one of Bristol's major art centre and after a quiet year without any exhibition, it has reopened its rooms for a major event: the third act of 'Still I Rise', ambitious project that toured the UK in a way, after exposure in Nottingham and Bexhill On Sea, East Sussex.

Subtitled 'Feminisms, Gender, Resistance', 'Still I Rise' is an ambitious project, and this is where I'll spend most of my time in the coming months, more on this soon...

STILL I RISE: FEMINISMS, GENDER, RESISTANCE - ACT 3

Saturday 14 September 2019 to Sunday 15 December 2019, 11:00 to 18:00 

Open Tuesday - Sunday, closed on Mondays. Free

A virtual visit in pictures:

Pioneering feminist art in the USA, Judy Chicago's photographic work is at the core of 'Still I Rise' and graces the main posters.

Women's bodies, fire earth, energy, her photographs are fulled with explosive tension and release.

A few of my favourite photos are these of Himalayan women, protesting to protect their environment by pacifically hugging trees, taken by artist Pamela Singh:

American female black liberation movements are also represented, and a poem by Maya Angelou gave its name to the exhibition, 'Still I Rise', quoted on this blog in a previous post as well:

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Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

- Maya Angelou, Still I Rise

"When “Still I rise” is said in unison, a future without patriarchal hierarchies starts to appear...a future that still requires artistic imaginings for us to see it - ★★★★★" 

- The Guardian

The gallery wrote:

Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance - Act 3 is a timely exhibition focusing on the his/herstory of resistance movements and alternative forms of living from a gendered perspective. This major group exhibition looks at resistance across different times, places and scales: from the domestic sphere to large-scale uprisings. Establishing intersectional thinking as its driving method and incorporating feminist and queer thought and action, Still I Rise spans the late 19th century to the present and beyond.

With over 100 exhibits by some 70 practitioners, Still I Rise presents the way in which resistance has been approached by visual artists, writers, architects, designers, activists, working as individuals or in groups. It takes place within a global context, referring to both key historic moments and recent women-led uprisings and demonstrations, including mass protests in Argentina confronting violence against women: ‘Ni Una Menos’, and the global Women’s Strike initiated in the US.

At Arnolfini, Still I Rise responds to local conversations about Bristol's legacy in the Transatlantic Slave Trade by focusing on black feminist artwork and activism. It also looks at the histories of feminist movements out of Bristol, by featuring a range of material from Feminist Archive South. Initiated in 1978 and based in Bristol, FAS is said to be the UK's first archive of feminist writing, publications, and donated material.

At the core of Still I Rise is the idea of collaboration, community building and egalitarianism. Throughout the exhibition, Arnolfini also hosts  a programme of performances, screenings, workshops and conversations, creating a site for participation and a platform for multiple voices.

Exhibiting artists and collectives include:

Amina Ahmed, Jane Addams / Hull House, Barby Asante, Alice Constance Austin, Xenobia Bailey, Glenn Belverio (Glennda Orgasm), Shirley Bruno, Micha Cárdenas, CARYATIDS (Chicks in Architecture Refuse to Yield to Atavistic Thinking in Design and Society) (Carol Crandall, Kay Janis and Sally Levine), Carolina Caycedo, Judy Chicago, Phyllis Christopher, Jackie Collins and Pat Garrett, Jamie Crewe, Blondell Cummings, Gille de Vlieg, Dyke Action Machine!, Gran Fury, Feminist Land Art Retreat, Guo Fengyi, fierce pussy, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Eduardo Gil, Anna Halprin, Rachael House, Hayv Kahraman, Corita Kent, Donna Kukama, Suzanne Lacy with Corey Madden, Zoe Leonard, Mary Lowndes, Kristin Luke and Minna Haukka, Vali Mahlouji / Archaeology of the Final Decade, with works by Kaveh Golestan, Alex Martinis Roe, Barbara McCullough, Ana Mendieta, Ad Minoliti, Ni Una Menos, Josèfa Njtam, Okwui Okpokwasili, Albert Potrony, Brenda Prince, Queer Yale Archive / YAMP (Yale AIDS Memorial Project), Raju Rage, Tabita Rezaire, Monica Ross, Lala Rukh, Zorka Ságlová, Victoria Santa Cruz, See Red Women's Workshop, Judy Seidman (Medu Art Ensemble), Tai Shani, Pamela Singh, Monica Sjöö, Terence Smith (Joan Jett Blakk), Linda Stupart, Ramaya Tegegne, Jala Wahid, Faith Wilding, Women Against Pit Closures, Zadie Xa, Osías Yanov.

Screening programme including works by:

Bryony Gillard, Lis Rhodes, Victoria Sin & Sophia Al-Maria, Tanya Syed, Tourmaline. 

Archival research and curation by:

Amy Budd, Albert Potrony, D-M Withers. 

The exhibition is a collaboration between Nottingham Contemporary, De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, and Arnolfini in Bristol; and is curated by Irene Aristizábal (Head of Curatorial and Public Practice, BALTIC), Rosie Cooper (Head of Exhibitions, De La Warr Pavilion), and Cédric Fauq (Curator, Nottingham Contemporary), with Kieran Swann (Head of Programme, Arnolfini) for Act 3.

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A few more images:

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Power up indeed!

It's not over... It's never over.

TROPHIES OF EMPIRE - TRACES AND LEGACIES: talk at the Arnolfini

I'll be there @ArnolfiniArts on Saturday for this talk, who's in?

TALKS | TROPHIES OF EMPIRE - TRACES AND LEGACIES Saturday 05 October 2019, 14:00 to 18:00
About the landmark 1992–93 exhibition ‘Trophies of Empire’, Split across sites in Liverpool, Bristol & Hull

TALKS | TROPHIES OF EMPIRE - TRACES AND LEGACIES 

Saturday 05 October 2019, 14:00 to 18:00

£8/6 + BF → Book

Looking back at this influential exhibition in which contemporary artists explored Britain’s colonial past. 

Split across sites in Liverpool, Bristol and Hull, the landmark 1992–93 exhibition ‘Trophies of Empire’ was initiated by artist Keith Piper and Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool, co-organised with Arnolfini and Hull Time Based Arts. For it, artists were invited to respond to the histories of British imperial power and the transatlantic slave trade, and their imprint on the present, particularly in relation to the three host port cities. 

Gathering together new artistic commissions and live art performances, each element of ‘Trophies of Empire’ was designed to interrogate and challenge the life and legacy of British colonialism. The exhibition was set against the backdrop of two significant geopolitical events in 1992: the quincentenary of Columbus’ colonial ‘discovery’ of the Americas, and consolidation of ‘Fortress Europe’ with the founding of the European Union by the Maastricht Treaty.

With the participation of Keith Piper and Bryan Biggs (Bluecoat), this event brings together artists, academics and people involved in ‘Trophies of Empire’ to look in detail at this far-reaching exhibition. The afternoon will begin with an in-conversation between Piper, Biggs and Louis Hartnoll (Afterall), followed by a roundtable led by Dr Anjalie Dalal-Clayton (Research Fellow at the Decolonising Art Institute, University of the Arts London). 

In between the two public discussions, attendees will have the chance to look through a range of materials related to the exhibition held in the Arnolfini Archive.

This event is organised in collaboration with Afterall as part of their Exhibition Histories research and publication project. For more details about this project, please visit Afterall. 

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More about the Arnolfini's programme here:

https://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson

On feminism and resistance

Hello there,

I'm doing research on feminism in art, feminism and art, and about resistance. 
Timely? You can't imagine how much :)

This will become part of a writing residency I'm involved in. More on this very soon!! 

Feel free to send new, revolutionary artists, exhibitions and shows my way.

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In the meantime, you can listen (again) to Chimamanda:

'We should all be feminists' | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | TEDxEuston

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie a renowned Nigerian novelist was born in Nigeria in 1977. She grew up in the university town of Nsukka, Enugu State where she attended primary and secondary schools, and briefly studied Medicine and Pharmacy. 

She then moved to the United States to attend college, graduating summa cum laude from Eastern Connecticut State University with a major in Communication and a minor in Political Science. She holds a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins and a Masters degree in African Studies from Yale University. 

She was a 2005-2006 Hodder Fellow at Princeton, where she taught introductory fiction. Chimamanda is the author of Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the 2007 Orange Prize For Fiction; and Purple Hibiscus, which won the 2005 Best First Book Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the 2004 Debut Fiction Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. 

In 2009, her collection of short stories, The Thing around Your Neck was published. She was named one of the twenty most important fiction writers today under 40 years old by The New Yorker and was recently the guest speaker at the 2012 annual commonwealth lecture. 

She featured in the April 2012 edition of Time Magazine, celebrated as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. She currently divides her time between the United States and Nigeria. Intro and Outro music by Kadialy Kouyate performed at TEDxEuston 2011. 

You can view the full performance here: http://youtu.be/KUfD5WGL3hw

"But still, like dust, I'll rise" - by Maya Angelou

This poem is the inspiration for the Arnolfini's new exhibition in Bristol City Centre.

It is relevant to share it here. 

Still I Rise

BY MAYA ANGELOU

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise" from And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems.  Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou.  Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Source: The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994)

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Here is a reading by the author:

VIDEO CREDITS Poem “Still I Rise” written and performed by Maya Angelou DIRECTORS Gabriel Diamond Phil Collis Patrick Barnes EDITOR Patrick Barnes MUSIC COMPOSITION/SOUND DESIGN Bobby Brinkerhoff

Banksy strikes - again - in London

The infamous Bristolian artist has announced today the opening of his own (counter-)shop

The "shop" has appeared overnight on Church Street in Croydon, South London, and a website is also available to take orders... Headlining on the homepage: "Gross Domestic Product", subtitled "The homewares store from Banksy". Opening soon...

Photo evidence on the shop's website:

Among many of his signatures items/artworks featured in the shop is his stab vest created for grime superstar Stormzy.

"I'm opening a shop today," the artist wrote on his Instagram account, "although the doors don't actually open." Adding: "probably best viewed at night".


London Frenzy and Mediterranean Rescues 


Large crowds apparently gathered on Tuesday morning, on the corner of Church Street and Frith Road, to see the Banksy homewares store .

The move can of course be interpreted as a reaction to the multiplication of unauthorised shops/exhibitions/corners reproducing Banksy's work without his permission.

In a statement sent to the media, Banksy explained that he was being "forced" to launch the online shop - called Gross Domestic Product as mentioned - because a greeting cards company was attempting to legally trade off of his name.

And he's been advised that opening a shop selling his own merchandise could help him protect the trademark on his art...

Here is the full statement: "A greetings cards company is contesting the trademark I hold to my art, and attempting to take custody of my name so they can sell their fake Banksy merchandise legally. I think they're banking on the idea I won't show up in court to defend myself."

The "adviser", Mr Mark Stephens, said to the press: “Banksy is in a difficult position because he doesn’t produce his own range of shoddy merchandise and the law is quite clear — if the trademark holder is not using the mark then it can be transferred to someone who will.”

Of course, the move can appear as a little controversial from the self-proclaimed anti-capitalist provocateur... But how else to remain in control of his messages in this greedy materialistic world?

Banksy added: "I still encourage anyone to copy, borrow, steal and amend my art for amusement, academic research or activism. I just don't want them to get sole custody of my name."

However, the artist wants to specifically use the profits from this endeavour to buy a boat to rescue migrants caught up in the crisis in the Mediterranean.

Banksy explained: “The proceeds from these products will go towards buying a new migrant rescue boat to replace the one confiscated by Italian authorities.  So you may well be committing a criminal offence by purchasing them.”

Among the items on sale are thus welcome mats made from life vests salvaged from the Mediterranean, each hand-stitched by women living in migrant camps in Greece...


Sotheby's Vol. II


Coincidentally, the same week, one of Banksy's paintings, Devolved Parliament - showing the House of Commons packed with chimpanzees, is also on auctioned at Sotheby's in London, on Thursday.

It's put on sell by Kevin Zuchowski-Morrison, owner of street art gallery Rise, who said: "It's incredible that we have this work, very clearly the work of a very famous artist who we all kind of love. It couldn't be any more authentic."

The painting had been on display in Bristol Museum for most of the month of June this year, where I have been interviewed myself about Banksy's work the the European television network, ARTE.

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Photos from Banksy's Instagram account:

https://grossdomesticproduct.com


Video:

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More on Banksy soon...

melissa x

A day at Spike Island with Imran Perretta and Meriç Algün

Insight into the new exhibition at Spike Island gallery, Bristol:

Programme for this autumn:

I was very touched by Imran's film and Meriç's art work.

They both address the lack of understanding and empathy we all suffer from in the post-modern world, especially inside multicultural communities, often misunderstood, misrepresented, and disenfranchised on many levels.

Imran's film is built around a powerful text, inspired by his experience in a Bangladeshi family/neighbourhood in London. The visuals, presented on two screens creating a sort of dialogue between the images and the sound, are showing a series of Asian men isolated in different rooms of an empty school, being invaded by water while they speak to us...

Their words are literally transporting us beyond their body and situation, into their stuggling mind...

Imran Perretta

the destructors

'the destructors' is a solo exhibition and major new film commission by London-based artist Imran Perretta. Drawing on the artist’s own experience as a young man of Bangladeshi heritage, the film explores personal and collective experiences of marginalisation and oppression. Shot on location in Tower Hamlets, East London, it reconsiders the figure of alienated male youth, exploring the complexities of ‘coming of age’ for young Muslim men living in the UK.

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Meriç Algün

Day Craving Night

As for Meriç Algün's exhibition, the Turkish artist now based in Stockholm, Sweden, encapsulates visual representations of isolation, separation and alienation in human relationships, in our world becoming a little harsher every day.

Through an installation based on shelves, she has selected imaginary books going by telling titles such as 'Half/Other Half', 'Distance', 'Bitterweet Wound' and of course 'Day Craving Night'.

Another central piece is a old European map, figuring the world before the continents drifted and after... Titled, in French, 'Avant la Séparation' and 'Après la Séparation' (ie. Before and after the separation...).

The other pieces are inspired by maritime travels, echoing the history of the trans-Atlantic exploration launched from the 1400s.

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The gallery wrote: 

For her solo exhibition at Spike Island, Stockholm-based artist Meriç Algün presents a series of new and recent works that explore the precarious nature of love in a world obsessed with individualism, consumption and borders. Bringing together a wide range of resources from the Carboniferous period to today, the exhibition takes the form of a spatial collage that draws analogies between love, nature and culture.

Working with a variety of media, from video and text to installation, Algün often works in context-specific ways and according to set parameters, using ordering systems to suggest that meaning is never as fixed as we might think. Bureaucratic language features prominently in early works such as The Concise Book of Visa Application Forms (2009), for example, in which the artist bound all the visa application forms in the world, rendering them unintelligible while illustrating the lengthy processes that different citizens have to go through before they are permitted to travel. Facing such questions as ‘Are you and your partner living in a genuine and stable relationship?’ Algün asks how these normative systems and restrictions are influencing what is possible for us to say and do.

Meriç also wanted to curate these very famous commercials from the 1990s - for the Calvin Klein's fragrance 'Eternity' - to underline the dominant pattern of representation of the Europo-centric ideal of domestic bliss and love... Misrepresenting so many of the other inhabitants of the megalopolises of our Western world. An ideal for most impossible to achieve in a daily life filled with alienation, stress, isolation, distance, misunderstanding and ego battles... But the myth sells well.

One of the inspirations for this exhibition was a book, 'Eros The Bittersweet', about the Greek god of Love...:

“Eros is an issue of boundaries. He exists because certain boundaries do. In the interval between reach and grasp, between glance and counterglance, between ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you too,’ the absent presence of desire comes alive.”– ANNE CARSON’S, EROS THE BITTERSWEET (1983)

MERIÇ ALGÜN

Meriç Algün (b. 1983, Istanbul) is an artist based in Stockholm. She studied at the Sabanci University, Istanbul, and later at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. Algün has held many solo exhibitions in Europe and has participated in numerous international biennials such as SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought Forms, 14th Istanbul Biennial (2015); Between the Pessimism of the Intellect and the Optimism of the Will, 5th Thessaloniki Biennial (2015); All the World’s Futures, 56th Venice Biennale (2015); Leaving to Return, 12th Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador (2014); You Imagine What You Desire, 19th Sydney Biennial (2014).

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Spike Island
133 Cumberland Road
Bristol BS1 6UX
United Kingdom

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Bristol, city of art!
More soon.

News from Beyond Borders: Beyond the Channel!

The Festival I volunteered for this summer is coming to England!!

In about a month, through a partnership with a university in the North:

“Beyond Borders” Festival 

travels to York University (UK)!

 27 - 31 October 2019

Following an invitation received from York University  (Honorary Academic institution at the 4th edition of the Festival ),  “Beyond Borders” will travel to York Universitybetween 27-31 October 2019,  where it will screen some of its award-winning films. 

More specifically, the films that will be shown are:

 “The Silence of Others” |Almudena Carracedo & Robert Bahar, Spain, USA 2018, 96’

BEST HISTORY DOCUMENTARY “Beyond Borders” 2019

The elder María Martín lost her mother when she was murdered by the Franko regime and she is one the 100.000 Spaniards in mass graves. Now, one whole lifetime later, María and many other Spaniards are seeking justice for Franco's victims, but Spanish law stands in their way. Directors Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar with producer Pedro Almodóvar try to give voice to the demands of their fellow citizens.

Trailer: 

“Children Below Deck” | Bettina Henkel, Austria, 2018, 90’

BEST SOCIO-POLITICAL DOCUMENTARY “Beyond Borders” 2019

The film tells the story of three generations: the (late) grandmother, the father and the daughter, who directs. The central theme is the transfer of the traumatic experience from generation to generation and illustrates the apparent influence that the historical changes of north-east Europe have had on the protagonist's psyche.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/331385394

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Screening place: Holbeck Cinema, York University – Film, Television and Interactive Media Department

Screening time: 18:30 

Free Entrance

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More information about the Festival :beyondborders.gr , info@beyondborders.gr

More information about the Hellenic History Foundation (IDISME):  www.idisme.gr, info@idisme.gr

Contact Number : +30 210 66 69 131 / 140

On Virtual Roads to Zimbabwe

My first review for the art website thisistomorrow, on the exhibition of Zimbabwean artist Kudzanai-Violet Hwami at Gasworks, London

http://thisistomorrow.info/…/kudzanai-violet-hwami-15952km-…

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami: (15,952km) via Trans-Sahara Hwy N1

Gasworks

19 September - 15 December 2019

Review by Melissa Chemam

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami’s first show in London is a glorious exploration of her Zimbabwean roots and ideals. Her exhibition at Gasworks, titled ‘(15,952km) via Trans-Sahara Hwy N1’, is the first institutional solo exhibition by the young artist, born in 1993 in Zimbabwe. Hwami left Zimbabwe aged nine because of the country’s significant political upheavals and is now based in London. 

The brightness of the colours used in the artist’s portraits of everyday Zimbabwean life is striking. Working with oil on canvas, she has created for this series a collection of scenes ranging from a medicine man picking the plants he needs to treat patients, to children playing in a courtyard, parents holding their baby, people in mourning and elegantly dressed women getting ready for a meeting among others. In half of her work exhibited here Hwami has used maps as background patterns, locating different geographical landmarks within the works. 

The large-scale canvases are built up through a process resembling collage though they are made of oil. In the second room, smaller canvases are exhibited, representing animals and totems, wooden masks and statues, as well as children and family scenes. These use more collage techniques, red backgrounds and photographic patterns. 

Visibly inspired by her own childhood memories and troubling images from her youth, as well as found images, Hwami has managed to make them her own. Each painting is thought of as an overlap of narratives, stories and representations of black bodies in many forms. In so doing, Hwami is addressing her ideas and ideals of her own family and her roots, as well as the legacies of colonialism. 

The artist explains that she is working from her personal experiences of “geographical dislocation and displacement”, a theme that is indeed deeply present in all these paintings. Displaying a few portraits of peaceful elderly figures, she also exhibits some still lives which highlight an explosion of intense colours: bright yellows, vibrant greens, warm browns, purple flowers and blue backgrounds. “Her intensely pigmented paintings combine visual fragments from a myriad of sources such as online images and family photographs, which collapse past and present into bold afro-futuristic visions,” notes the gallery’s text. The energy and mobility of her paintings are striking, and her research and forms question ideas around power politics and dis/placement. 

Hwami has sought a way reconnect with present-day Zimbabwe, and spent four weeks working at Dzimbanhete, an artist-run space close to Harare. She described the experience, however, as an estrangement, feeling “removed and othered” through this contemporary experience in her country of birth. 

The paintings exhibited at Gasworks are a result of this confrontation between the artist’s idealistic notions of belonging or rootedness and her actual experience travelling back to Zimbabwe in times of change. The exhibition is a unique, refreshing and powerful insight into the artist’s personal geo-political journey.

Published on 29 September 2019