Ocula Report Sharjah Biennial 14: Leaving the Echo Chamber 15 Mar 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula In Meiro Koizumi's three-channel video installation, The Angels of Testimony (2019), the central frame features an interview with Hajime Kondo about his time as a solider of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The conversation centres on war crimes perpetrated in China, including the beheading of Chinese prisoners for...
Ocula Conversation Diana Campbell Betancourt Diana Campbell Betancourt is a curator working predominantly across South and Southeast Asia. Since 2013 she has been the founding artistic director of the Samdani Art Foundation and chief curator of the Dhaka Art Summit in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a transnational art event that has grown in size and scale ever since its first edition in 2012. Backed by...
Ocula Report Chinternet Ugly at Manchester’s Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art 7 Mar 2019 : Mike Pinnington for Ocula China, home to 802 million internet users, is subject to sophisticated online censorship. This shrouded state of affairs, unsurprisingly perhaps, serves to reinforce stereotypes around conformity elsewhere. Any realm, digital or otherwise, subject to such strict scrutiny must necessarily be bland and uncritical, right? I was mulling over such...
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.
Rathin BarmanNotes on Essential Structures I, II, III, IV, 2019 Charcoal, acrylic, ink and brush on paper
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
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...
Ocula Conversation Raqs Media Collective Chief curator, 11th edition of the Shanghai Biennale, 2016 The 11th edition of the Shanghai Biennale (SHB 11) opens to the public on 12 November 2016 under the chief curatorship of the New Delhi-based Raqs Media Collective. Anchored by the idea of biennale making as a form of posing questions, the SHB 11 is titled Why Not Ask Again: Arguments, Counter-arguments, and Stories. In this Ocula Conversation...
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.
