Ocula Conversation Bani Abidi: ‘What you see in my films is what I know’ A group of voices accompanies me in the exhibition. They are singing words I cannot comprehend, yet the warm tunes are familiar: folk songs, love songs, songs of longing. There are letters, too. They speak of the quotidian details of a soldier's life: the hardness of the war, sending money to the family, and longing for familiar landscapes, food,...
Ocula Report Aichi to Okayama: Art in Japan Looks to the Future 11 Oct 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula There has been a flurry of triennial and biennial art activity in Japan this year. The Aichi Triennale opened in Nagoya this August, sparking a national debate about the shutting down of a display of formerly censored works—the result of public backlash against a burnt image of Emperor Hirohito and a statue commemorating the women forced into...
Ocula Insight | Video Mark Bradford’s Call for Unity at Shanghai’s Long Museum 16 August 2019 Mark Bradford walks through Mark Bradford: Los Angeles Mark Bradford: Los Angeles at the Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai (27 July–13 October 2019) is the artist's largest solo exhibition to date in China. In this video for Ocula, Bradford and Diana Nawi, curator of the show, walk through selected works that convey the artist's concerns with...
Barakat Contemporary is Barakat Gallery's new space devoted to contemporary art.
Barakat Contemporary will continue to explore the points of contact and conflict among diverse cultures through Barakat Gallery’s extensive collection and archives encompassing the humanities and anthropology and will actively implement research-based projects. In collaboration with artists who cross-cross the humanity and civilizations, Barakat Contemporary will showcase exhibitions that open up new horizons for contemporary art and will introduce internationally noteworthy artists, thus supporting artists’ long-term growth.
Barakat Contemporary will produce knowledge and discourse and lead the art scene by not only planning professional exhibitions but also creating arenas for exchange with experts from various fields.
Ocula Report 58th Venice Biennale: May You Live In Interesting Times 24 May 2019 : Mohammad Salemy for Ocula The 58th Venice Biennale, May You Live In Interesting Times (11 May–24 November 2019), certainly benefitted from low expectations, given the lacklustre curatorial of the previous edition, when different segments of the show were conceptually framed with titles like 'Pavilion of Joys and Fears' and 'Pavilion of Colours'. Add to this the...
Ocula Report Gwangju Biennale: Imagined Borders 20 Sep 2018 : Tessa Moldan for Ocula 'I have felt persecuted for weeks by this same asphyxiating dream.' So narrates the forlorn Portuguese speaker in Kiluanji Kia Henda's film, Concrete Affection – Zopo Lady (2014), as city scenes and modernist buildings in Luanda flit past the camera's lens. The narration is pulled from Another Day of Life (1971), Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski's...
Ocula Report 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London 27 Oct 2017 : Amina Diab for Ocula Visitors arriving in the courtyard of Somerset House for 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair (5–8 October 2017) were greeted by a large work by Pascale Marthine Tayou entitled Summer Surprise (2017). In this site-specific installation, wooden spears crisscrossed by colourful cobblestones made up a structure that sat atop the Edmond J. Safra...
Ocula Report Sydney Summer Report 12 Jan 2016 : Rachel Fuller for Ocula When Silence Falls Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 19 December 2015 - 1 May 2016Currently showing in the contemporary galleries of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, When Silence Falls is a collection-based, group exhibition curated by AGNSW curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, Cara Pinchbeck. When...
Related Press What to look for at Frieze London The Guardian : 2 October 2019 Modernist architecture is still a big focus for artists – as long as its Eurocentric and male-dominated history can be rewritten while its buildings are celebrated. Frieze Live is one of the fair's main curated sections, and this year it features British artist Shezad Dawood's performance piece. Dawood's work draws on the work of Bangladeshi...
Related Press The Art Newspaper's pick of the 2019 Venice Biennale The Art Newspaper : 30 April 2019 There are hundreds of exhibitions in Venice during the Biennale. Alongside the main exhibition in the Giardini and Arsenale, there are 90 national presentations, many in nearby pavilions in the Giardini and in spaces around the Arsenale, but also dotted throughout Venice. Then there are the official collateral exhibitions in museums and galleries,...
Related Press Shezad Dawood launches his ten-part film cycle during the 57th Venice Biennale Art Radar Journal : 27 June 2017 To coincide with the 57th Venice Biennale, London-based artist Shezad Dawood launches his new body of work from 7 May to 24 September 2017. The work Leviathan is a ten-part film cycle that will unfold over the next three years across a number of international venues, concluding in a presentation of all ten episodes in 2020.
Related Press I've created a monster! Shezad Dawood on his oceanic epic Leviathan The Guardian : 7 May 2017 The giant squid, democracy, mental health, migration—big beasts, one and all. And each plays a role in Leviathan, a cycle of 10 films by artist Shezad Dawood that traces links from human activity to marine ecology and back again. The fates of crayfish, phytoplankton and spots on the sun are intertwined with that of the desperate souls...
Related Video & Audio El Anatsui: ‘The golden rule is, there are no rules’ Art Basel : 7 June 2019 El Anatsui has carved a name for himself with his monumental hanging sculptures made with recycled metal scraps. As imposing and spectacular as they are fragile and portable, these works have been exhibited in some of the world's most prestigious institutions, most recently at Munich's Haus der Kunst and in the Venice Biennale's first Ghana...
