Den Frie Udstillingsbygning / Centre of Contemporary Art

Oslo Plads 1 • DK—2100 Copenhagen • www.denfrie.dk

OPENING HOURS: Tuesday-Sunday 10 — 17 • Thursday 10 — 21

Domestic Tourism II (2008-2009) by MAHA MAAMOUN (born in 1972, lives and works in Cairo) consists of edited scenes taken from Egyptian films with the pyramids as the backdrop. While using generic and emblematic visual representations of the Egyptian pyramids, Maamoun examines the rhetoric of ideological and cultural representation. The photo series Definitions (1997-2002) by GURAM TSIBAKHASHVILI (born in 1960, lives and works in Tbilisi) evokes discontinued taxonomy of modernization of everyday life during Soviet times. Textual and iconic interventions on original black and white negatives found in different private photo archives de-contextualize past moments and place them in a more active relational and imaginary space.

Ground Floor America adopts the open and curious attitude of Ilf and Petrov. They portrayed a ‘foreign’ place and culture in a way that makes it hard to imagine that the Cold War era was to happen only a decade later. The Cold War put an end to such an intellectual leap for the next number of years. The exhibition asks whether the book is expresses a promise that is meaningful even in the context of the present situation. Its title refers to the exploration of America and the exhibition presents works from the countries on the fringes of European modernity. This makes an ironic comment on the need to constantly ‘discover’ and it points to ways of using humour, displacement, and the unexpected in order to shatter the cultural prejudices and the ways they influence and ossify the perception of reality, especially our own.

GROUND FLOOR AMERICA

The exhibition Ground Floor America takes its title from the travel book written by the Soviet writers Ilf and Petrov in 1936. The book Ground Floor America is taken as a metaphor to discuss contradictions related to the notion of ‘curatorial research’,

‘cultural translations’ and modes of representation. What gets lost, hidden, misinterpreted in the process of the curatorial research? How is it possible to represent local specificities in a global context but avoid producing the cultural ‘other’? How can one translate the untranslatable? These are some of the questions the exhibition raises. The show is a reflection on the research undertaken by the curatorial collective, WHW, in the course of the two-year long preparation for the 11th International Istanbul Biennale (2009). It focuses on the Middle East, Central Asia, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. These are all regions that, to various degrees, are struggling with their imposed and/or internalized marginalized position in the Western and Soviet project of modernism. In

VYACHESLAV AKHUNOV •

JAWAD AL MALHI • FACTORY OF

FOUND CLOTHES • INCI FURNI •

ORKHAN HUSEYNOV • TIGRAN

KHACHATRYAN • YURI LEIDERMAN

• MAHA MAAMOUN • VLADO

MARTEK • DARINKA POP-MITIĆ

• VAHID SHARIFIAN • ŠKART •

JINOOS TAGHIZADEH • GURAM

TSIBAKHASHVILI • ALEXANDER

UGAY • YELENA & VIKTOR

VOROBYEV

curated by What, How & for Whom / WHW

this project contemporary art acts in opposition to ideas of ‘authentic’, ‘autochthonous’ national cultures.

Travelling as official Soviet writers through the USA during the Depression, and describing the American culture and way of life with characteristic humour and satirical approach, Ilf and Petrov criticized America as well as Soviet prejudice against ‘decadent American capitalism’. The book offers a thought-provoking shift by reversing the geopolitical perspective. Though the book belongs to the genre of ‘travel literature’, it makes a sharp contrast to the discourse of travel narratives produced by Western writers. The Western hegemonic gaze frequently puts forth superior attitudes to ‘other’ cultures, peoples, and places. In Ground Floor America, the analysis of both American culture and the social and economic conditions is done with lots of sharp witted irony. Without falling into traps of simple dichotomies, the writers provide a poignant critique of the American society of 1930’s. It speaks of racism, intolerance, increasing poverty and unemployment. This critique remains relevant for the broader social analysis of present times. Today, as then, one of the consequences of the economic crisis has been the massive rightward shift of the (European) electoral body. The post-89 conservative backlash, the dismantling of the welfare state, rampant anti-terror legislation and the black world of ‘security’ agencies are all slowly eroding what was built up through two centuries of emancipation.VAHID SHARIFIAN

GURAM TSIBAKHASHVILI

Works presented in this exhibition all in a certain way struggle with translation. They juxtapose different motifs, images, words, objects and performative actions to compose unexpected semantic constellations inspired by a wide range of historical sources and references. Or simply put, they deliberately try to confuse, to defy easy understanding and interpretation, often through subverting and reshuffling the well known. Referring to the process of constructing cultural, geopolitical and gender identities, they bring about various cultural dislocations and create fragmented narratives dealing with the heritage of the past and its critical reworking in order to address its unrealized possibilities.

Animated video Waltz (2009) by ALEXANDAR UGAY (born in 1978, lives and works in Almaty) turns martial arts technique into movements reminiscent of some magic dance. The surreal choreography is based on illustrations of a self defense book. It suggests that aggressive behaviour is a prerequisite to social success.

Since 1990 Belgrade based collective ŠKART has been developing different forms of experimental collective work that involves a wide range of participants. Their work is often addressing social issues connected to war traumas of the 1990’s and the post-war normalization process in countries of former Yugoslavia. In 2000 Škart initiated an ongoing project, Kitchen Wisdoms - My Embroideries, in which a number of marginalized women took part in a political discussion concerning specific gender issues and

social perspectives on embroidery. JINOOS TAGHIZADEH’s (born in 1971, lives and works in Tehran) work deals with the problematic construction of collective identities in contemporary Iran. In the secluded area of the Konj Café in Teheran, the artist has been performing a series of performances for a period of 7 months. The performances address a wide range of suppressed problems of Iranian society; the position of woman, censorship, the freedom of speech, migrations, the notions of death, punishment and trauma...

In the project Spirit (2007-2009) INCI FURNI (born in 1976, lives and works in Istanbul) continues her interests in observing different models of gender identity in contemporary Turkish culture. She uses pictures of the crescent moon and star, of popular women with and without scarves, of provocative political illustrations, legends and advertisements. All works aim to deconstruct the ideal Turkish woman and challenge society’s normative rhetoric.

The works by JAWAD AL MALHI (born in 1969, lives and works in Jerusalem) depict the reality of the Shufat Refugee Camp on the north eastern edge of Jerusalem. To address contrasted notions of visibility and distance, normality and oppression, marginality and isolation, Al Malhi investigates the everyday life at the camp and its continuous transformation.

By deconstructing the language of political rhetoric, the works by VYACHESLAV AKHUNOV (born in 1948, lives in Tashkent) outline the narrative of the political history of the USSR. Akhunov’s works open up a number of questions that go beyond ironic subversion of the ideological apparatus. They form an archive that has a relationship to the past and that goes beyond revisionism and nostalgia and remains open in its connection to communism.

DARINKA POP-MITIĆ’s (born in 1975, lives and works in Belgrade) works deal with the reconstruction of collective memories and their impact on politics, and vice versa. Her reworking of the mural from 1976 Solidarity of the Yugoslav people with the peoples of Latin America made by the Salvador Allende Artistic Brigade in the Gallery of the Student Centre in Belgrade revisits a possibility of political potential for artistic Engagement.

Revolutionary potential of cinema has been at the core interest of TIGRAN KHACHATRYAN (born in 1980, lives and works in Yerevan) Since 2000 he has been engaged with an alternative cinema producing ‘garage film’. While re-working film classics such as La Chinoise (1967) by Jean Luc Godard, Stalker (1979) by Andrei Tarkovsky or The beginning (1967) by Artavazd Peleshian, Khachatryan is freeing the originals from their ballast of genre and style, narration and plot.

YURI LEIDERMAN (born in 1963, lives and works in Berlin and Moscow) has been working on the series Geopoetics since 2002, creating imaginary landscapes that transform the fixed ethnical and political emblems into non-existent subjects, floating signifiers and abstract forms of meaning.

Through use of cheap and found materials, a strategy that he has been developing since the mid-1970’s, VLADO MARTEK (born in 1951, Zagreb, lives in Zagreb) provides a provocative and pessimistic commentary on the ‘political correctness’ and clichéd onedimensional definitions of democracy, civilization and multiculturalism. The series of smaller format collages and drawings and the wall painting USA-Balkans use the outline of the United States as a red thread that connects different artistic investigations. The main method Martek uses is a détournement that is re-using familiar elements to create new meanings that subvert the dominant narrative.

THE FACTORY OF FOUND CLOTHING/GLUKLYA & TSAPLYA was founded in 1996 in Petersburg by Natalia Persina-Yakimanskaya (Gluklya) and Olga Egorova (Tsaplya). The work is structured as a Greek tragedy with dramatis personae divided into chorus and protagonists. The Three mothers and the chorus (2006) examine social and gender problems of motherhood in contemporary Russia through showing the normative repression and economic parameters of social relations.

Works of YELENA VOROBYEVA (born in 1959, lives in Almaty) and VIKTOR VOROBYEV (born in 1959, lives in Almaty) deal with various aspects of Post-Soviet conditions. The project Photo for Memory is the outcome of a journey in Southern Kazakhstan and is based on the idea of an imaginary trip. If a Mountain Doesn’t Go to Mahomet… (2002) creates strange and surprising displacements of iconic symbols of world metropolises into the rural area of Kazakhstan. Thus challenging the notion of the ‘other’ and ‘the exotic’.

VAHID SHARIFIAN’s (born in 1982, lives and works in Teheran) works often present everyday occurrences and political incidents. They borrow elements from popular and mass culture and draw their energy from the collective consciousness of contemporary Iranian society. My father is a democrat and through his chimney there are always hearts flying to the sky (2008) presents a series of mediated digital photographs featuring Sophia Loren in a surreal kitchen environment. Based on an original cook book by Sophia Loren, the work triggers various associations related to geopolitics, gender, consumption, hypocracy and sexuality.

Inviting the exhibition visitors to re-work the borders of the current political map of the world, Geography Lesson. Homework (2003) by ORKHAN HUSEYNOV (born in 1978, lives and works in Baku) examines the relation between political and cultural entities in the present world, deconstructing the notion of nation-state.

ALEXANDER UGAY

DARINKA POP-MITIĆ

INCI FURNI

ŠKART

YURI LEIDERMAN

FACTORY OF FOUND CLOTHES

ORKHAN HUSEYNOV TIGRAN KHACHATRYAN

VYACHESLAV AKHUNOV

JINOOS TAGHIZADEH