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 Conversation Zheng Bo Hong Kong-based artist Zheng Bo's social, ecological, and community-engaged art practice has, in recent years, focused on moving beyond a human-centred perspective to an all-inclusive, multi-species approach. He takes up marginalised plants and communities of people as subjects in his large-scale interventions, which reintroduce wildness into...
Ocula Report Auckland Art Fair 2019: Conversations Extended 24 May 2019 : Sherry Paik for Ocula The weather was clement for the annual Auckland Art Fair (2–5 May 2019), which was again at The Cloud on Queens Wharf. This year's edition was a get-together of 41 galleries, mostly from around Auckland and across New Zealand, with 5 spaces hailing from Sydney and the rest from Cook Islands (Bergman Gallery), Hobart (Michael Bugelli Gallery),...
Experimenter was co-founded by Prateek & Priyanka Raja in 2009. With a multidisciplinary approach, the gallery is an incubator for an ambitious and challenging contemporary practice. The program represents some of the most critical contemporary artists worldwide. Considered to be a ‘pace-setter’ for its region, the program extends from exhibition-making, to knowledge creation, through regular talks, performances, workshops and most importantly, through it’s much acclaimed, annual curatorial intensive, Experimenter Curators’ Hub. In 2016, its artist-book publishing wing, Experimenter Books was launched. Experimenter’s program is rooted in dialogue and dissent. In 2018, the Experimenter Learning Program (ELP) was launched. ELP enables discussion, debate and learning in fields of contemporary and performing arts, curatorship, film, writing, language and social culture.
Sanchayan GhoshCross exam my nocturn doubts: labour reconciled... A conversive architectural installation, 2018 Brick dust, lime, Jaggery and Khoyer mortar slabs, LED text on board, sound, books and journals
Prabhakar PachputeSea of Fists, 2018 Charcoal and acrylic drawing on the wall and plywood cutouts
Ocula Photolog Frieze New York 2019 6 May 2019 'Building on Frieze's history as a platform for discovery and challenging the traditional art fair format, the eighth edition introduces new curators and collaborations with leading museum directors; including two exhibitions exploring virtual reality and the significance of self-taught artists, and two new sections celebrating Latin American art...
Ocula Photolog Art Basel in Hong Kong 2019 31 March 2019 'Art Basel reinforces its ongoing commitment to showcasing exceptional art from Asia and the Asia Pacific, with over half of the participating galleries having exhibition spaces in the region. The main sector of the show features 196 of the world's leading galleries presenting the highest quality of painting, sculpture, drawings, installation,...
Ocula Conversation Samson Young Artist, Hong Kong Since receiving his PhD in Music Composition at Princeton University in 2013, Samson Young has set up a Hong Kong-based practice predominantly focused on sonic works. These are presented in a wide range of formats including video, drawing, neon, books, and installation, and often involve Young performing in some capacity. For instance, Young...
Ocula Report New propositions on curatorial practice: the making of the 11th Shanghai Biennale 18 May 2017 The 11th Shanghai Biennale (SHB11): Why Not Ask Again: Arguments, Counter-arguments, and Stories was an exhibition staged at the Power Station of Art, Shanghai from 12 November 2016 to 12 March 2017. The exhibition was curated by the artist and curatorial collective Raqs Media Collective, and featured 92 artists from 40 countries, with a strong...
Related Press Naeem Mohaiemen at SALT Beyoğlu Art in America : 1 March 2019 Naeem Mohaiemen, a filmmaker and writer of Bangladeshi extraction, was born in London in 1969, graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio, and is currently a PhD candidate in anthropology at Columbia University. For his deconstruction of radical leftist movements, particularly those that germinated in the 1970s, he delves into various archives,...
Related Press Naeem Mohaiemen: ‘I wanted to take the documentary form and jar it’ The Guardian : 21 January 2019 Naeem Mohaiemen was born in London in 1969 to Bengali parents and grew up in newly independent Bangladesh. As a visual artist and writer he returns often to the political struggles of the 1970s and the decline of leftist movements in east Asia. One recent video work, Two Meetings and a Funeral, focuses on a key moment in Bangladesh's ideological...
Related Press One Word: The Meaning of ‘Hegemony’ Frieze : 1 November 2018 Nineteen years after I first watched it, two scenes from Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides (1999) have stayed with me. An early sequence, in which a teenager explains her death urges to a bewildered member of hospital staff: 'Obviously, Doctor, you've never been a 13-year-old girl.' And the film's closing lines, when the narrator recounts his...
Related Press “I Wish to Let You Fall Out of My Hands (Chapter I)”: Bangladeshi filmmaker Naeem Mohaiemen and Pakistani artist Bani Abidi – in conversation Art Radar : 26 February 2018 I wish to let you fall out of my hands (Chapter I) at Experimenter presents the works of Bangladeshi visual artist, writer and filmmaker Naeem Mohaiemen and Pakistani artist Bani Abidi in an exhibition that seeks to decode the meanings behind structures. The artists use film and photography to explore the complexity of peoples' relationships with...
Related Video & Audio Naeem Mohaiemen | Turner Prize Nominee 2018 | TateShots Tate : 7 September 2018 Naeem Mohaiemen works with film, installation and essays. His practice investigates transnational socialist politics after the Second World War. This period was framed by decolonisation and the erasing of political utopias.
