Ocula Report Beatriz González at KW Institute for Contemporary Art: In Focus 14 Dec 2018 : Pia Chakraverti-Wuerthwein for Ocula Retrospective 1965–2017, Beatriz González's exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin (13 October 2018–6 January 2019), presents a selection of 120 works that bear witness to Colombia's political and social upheavals of the last 50 years. Throughout, the link between González's practice and the sociopolitical context it references...
Ocula Conversation Ingrid Schaffner Curator, 57th Carnegie International Founded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie as part of the Carnegie Institute in 1895, Carnegie Museum sought to 'bring the world' to the city with a grand building housing a natural history museum, a library, and an art museum operating as a fluid space for knowledge exchange. In its 123-year history, the institution has built up a world-class...
Ocula Report Extra States: Nations in Liquidation at Kunsthal Extra City 8 Dec 2018 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula The nation-state—a nation (a people) presided over by a governing body with jurisdiction over a defined territory (the state)—is either going through a renaissance or demise, depending on one's perspective. There has been talk about the nation-state's end for years—from a 2013 United States National Intelligence Council report...
Trained as an architect, Francis Alÿs has constantly teased the political from the poetic gesture, and turned failure into a language. The medium of walking as art practice stems from the Situationist practice of derive, and Alÿs has used this process to draw out larger questions of spatial and ideological boundaries. The Green Line, 2007, saw him walk the boundary between Israel and Palestine, a literal enacting of territorial division. Other works have seen him chasing tornadoes, shifting mountains and pushing a block of ice around until it melted into nothing.
Ocula Report Shanghai Art Exhibitions to See: The Lowdown 2 Nov 2018 : Sam Gaskin for Ocula There is no official Shanghai Art Week, but the term has nevertheless entered the lexicon of the city's contemporary art community. It's especially apt this year, with the firmly established West Bund Art Fair (8–11 November 2018) and Art021 (9–11 November 2018) taking place the same week that the 12th Shanghai Biennale opens at the Power Station...
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...
Related Press 10 Highlights from the inaugural Kathmandu Triennale 2017 Art Radar Journal : 10 April 2017 The Kathmandu Triennale is an event developed on the back of past success of the Kathmandu International Art Festival, held in 2009 and 2012. The inaugural edition of Kathmandu Triennale (KT 2017) takes ‘The City’ as a thematic starting point – a catalyst to explore the many socio-cultural and political issues embedded in urban settings. Francis...
Related Press Francis Alÿs to create new work inspired by his frontline experiences in Mosul The Art Newspaper : 7 December 2016 The Belgian artist Francis Alÿs will create a new work for the Iraqi pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale next year (13 May-26 November 2017) based on his recent experiences spent on the frontline in Mosul, northern Iraq, as part of the ongoing military offensive against Islamic state (Isil) militants. The piece was commissioned by the Ruya...
Related Press Francis Alÿs at David Zwirner, London Art in America : 1 December 2016 'When the operative system of a society collapses, can art bring about an alternative way of thinking . . . ?' Francis Alÿs wrote this question on a notebook page reproduced in the brochure accompanying Ciudad Juárez Projects, his powerful exhibition at David Zwirner in London. For the works on view, Alÿs brought his poetic sensibility to...
Related Press Here are the artists in the 2016 Taipei Biennial ARTNews : 8 July 2016 The Taipei Fine Arts Museum has announced the artists tapped for their 2016 Taipei Biennial, which takes place from September 10 this year through February 5 of 2017. Now in its tenth edition, the biennial this year takes on themes related to artistic and curatorial practices, and as per press release, 'embraces the catalytic role of museums in...
