Venues

V.M. Gallery

The Rangoonwala Trust was founded by the late Mr. Mohammad Aly Rangoonwala. It started with imparting vocational training to women at the Zuleikhabai V.M. Gany Rangoonwala Community Center in 1971. In June 1987, Mr. Mohammad Aly Rangoonwala established the non-for-profit V.M. Art Gallery with an open-door policy to advance the promotion of young artists and art as an educative resource. For the last three decades, the V.M. Art Gallery has been supporting and exhibiting the artistic endeavors of local as well as international artists, unfettered by commercial impetus.

1 / 17
2 / 17
3 / 17
4 / 17
5 / 17
6 / 17
7 / 17
8 / 17
9 / 17
10 / 17
11 / 17
12 / 17
13 / 17
14 / 17
15 / 17
16 / 17
17 / 17

Participating Artists:

Tabita Rezaire /
1 / 21

Tabita Rezaire

Born in 1989 in Paris (France)
Lives and works in Johannesburg (South Africa)

Tabita Rezaire is a French – of Guyanese/Danish descent – video artist, health-tech-politics practitioner and Kemetic/Kundalini yoga teacher based in Johannesburg. She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics (Paris) and a master’s degree in artist moving image from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (London). Rezaire is a founding member of the artist group NTU, half of the duo Malaxa, and mother of the energy house SENEB. Artsy declared Rezaire among the “emerging artists to watch for in 2017,” Artnet among the “international Black artists of 2016,” and True Africa amid the “top opinion makers of the African continent in 2015”. In 2017, she presented her first solo show, Exotic Trade, at the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg. Her work has been shown internationally – notably at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), the National Gallery of Denmark, the Berlin Biennale, the Tate Modern (London), the Museum of Modern Art (Paris), MoCADA (New York City), and The Broad (Los Angeles). She has also presented her work on numerous panels – Het Nieuwe Institut (Rotterdam), the Royal Academy (The Hague), the Kunsthalle (Bern), the National Gallery (Harare), Cairotronica (Cairo), Fakugezi Digital Art Africa (Johannesburg). Rezaire has curated screenings at the Institute of Contemporary Art (London), led spiritual technology workshops worldwide, and seen her writing published by Intellect books. Tabita Rezaire’s practice unearths the possibilities of decolonial healing through the politics of technology. Navigating architectures of power – online and offline – her works tackle the pervasive matrix of coloniality and its effects on identity, technology, sexuality, health and spirituality. Through screen interfaces, her digital healing activism offers substitute readings to dominant narratives, decentering occidental authority.

Inner Fire is a series of life-size digital self-portrait collages exploring the politics of the artist’s identities, aspirations and contradictions. The images respectively embody an archetype of the black woman in regard to race, sex, spirituality, technology and capital, mapping how those narratives affect her own as well as collective imaginaries and identities.

Inner Fire – Shadeliscious
Diesec print, 170 x 100 cm.
Edition of 5
© Tabita Rezaire
Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
Curated by SPARCK.

Madeeha Iqbal /
2 / 21

Madeeha Iqbal

Born in 1989 in Lahore (Pakistan)
Lives and works in Lahore (Pakistan)

Madeeha Iqbal is a multidisciplinary artist who works in a variety of mediums, spanning from installation to painting, sculpture to digital media. She completed her BFA, with Honours, from The Institute of Design and Visual Arts, Lahore College for Women University in 2012, then proceeded to complete her one-year Professional Diploma in Calligraphy and Illumination at the National College of Arts, Lahore. She obtained her MA Hons in Visual Arts from the National College of Arts in 2016. Her work has been widely exhibited locally, and she has been part of two international collaborative projects for the Emergent Art Space Online Gallery. Despite her training as a painter, Iqbal is constantly experimenting with her technical practice, exploring new means of creating a multi-layered visual discourse. She incorporates non-traditional materials in her work to endow it with a sense of spontaneity and creative dynamism, applying this to her interest in the continuous, natural dialogue in which we engage with our surroundings.

Iqbal demonstrates her innovative approach to medium in her untitled sculptural installation for the Karachi Biennale 2017. In her work, she synthesises two disparate interpretations of the commonplace: one, in the sense of feminine accoutrement; the other, in medical equipment. By inserting hypodermic needles into the very fabric of the handbag, bodyshaper and shoes, she amalgamates and transforms both sets of everyday objects, creating a strangely uncomfortable, anomalous whole. Iqbal’s novel use of ordinary objects also raises questions of the societal pressures that women are forced face on a day to day basis – it encourages the viewer to place themselves inside the work, evoking a subtle yet penetrative empathy.

 

Untitled, 2017.
Hypodermic needles, shoes, handbag, bodyshaper
30 x 36 x 20 cm.
Courtesy the artist

Nida Ramzan /
3 / 21

Nida Ramzan

Born in 1988 in Faisalabad (Pakistan)
Lives and works in Faisalabad (Pakistan)

Nida Ramzan received her BFA from Faisalabad G.C. University (Institute of Art and Design, Faisalabad Institute of Textile and Fashion Design) in 2010, subsequently obtaining her MFA from the National College of Arts, Lahore, in 2014. Her work has been exhibited in several group shows nationally, as well as in Venice. She currently teaches at the National Textile University, Faisalabad. Her art practice, manifesting itself both in video and on canvas, focuses on the female body and its multifaceted relationship with everyday objects in various spaces and environments. Ramzan explains the basis of her practice: “On a daily basis, I find myself overwhelmingly confronted with images and societal prescriptions of what it means, as a woman, to be ‘beautiful’. I have decided to address the illusions and realities that exist for women faced with this aspect of contemporary culture.”

In her video work on view at the Karachi Biennale 2017, Ramzan has experimented with the division of the filmed material, so that the elements, once whole, undergo a transformation, merging the natural form of the body with the other compositional objects and elements to create a shifting, two-dimensional sculpture. The work explores the pervasive contemporary issue of the premium placed on the appearance of women, visually symbolizing the resultant obsession with expending energy into self-presentation and re-creation. Playing on Ramzan’s own experience with textiles, the male figure measuring and re-measuring the female form offers an artistic critique of the psychological, corporeal and cultural implications fostered by the contemporary human condition.

Measurements, 2013.
Video, 2:11 min.
Courtesy the artist

Sabah Husain /
4 / 21

Sabah Husain

Born in 1959 in Peshawar (Pakistan)
Lives and works between Lahore (Pakistan) and Boston (USA)

Sabah Husain is a visual artist and curator. She received her B.F.A from National College of Arts, Lahore and M.F.A from Kyoto University of Fine Arts and Music, Japan, in 1988. During the period 2014-15, she conducted her Post Doctoral Research and Studio Practice at the School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA. She has held various group shows at: the School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Kyoto City Museum, Japan; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Asia Pacific Museum, California; and the National Art Gallery, Islamabad, Pakistan. Selected solo exhibitions were held at: the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington DC, 2015; Yamaso Art Gallery, Kyoto; and October Gallery, London. Her works are in the collection of National Art Gallery Pakistan, Permanent Collection of the U.S Embassy Islamabad, [AIE] Pakistan, Victoria and Albert Museum, British Museum and Bradford Art Galleries and Museums, U.K and Okinawa Museum, Japan. In 2004, she was awarded the Japan Foundation Fellowship. In 1996, she received the National Excellence Award at the 7th National Exhibition of Visual Arts, Islamabad Pakistan. In 1987, at the Kyoto Museum Exhibition, she received the Musrasaki Award. From 2000 to date, she has served as Adjunct Faculty, Department of Fine Arts, M.F.A, National College of Arts Lahore. Her artistic practice draws from a wide range of influences, with music and poetry remaining pivotal to her work.

Husain’s work for the Karachi Biennale 2017, Nur Jahan, is an homage to the eponymous Mughal Empress, epitomising the artist’s multi-medial approach. Husain explains the importance of the aesthete who ruled India: “She was a remarkably powerful influence on the aesthetics of her age. Nur Jahan's narrative is unique because she did not conform to the established ideals of a woman of the time and stood outside the realm of traditional Indian prototype. Her story is one of political dexterity, military competence and numerous cultural achievements.” In Nur Jahan the artist has referenced three architectural structures which she patronized and designed: her father, Itamad ud Daulla's garden tomb in Agra; the Nur Afshan river-front garden on the River Jamuna in Agra; and her own tomb in Lahore, on the banks of the River Ravi. Husain has used the plans of these gardens and tombs, maps of the cities and the architectural embellishments to create a visual narrative in coloured glass, in conjunction with a concurrent strand derived from Nur Jahan's portraits, images of her royal decrees and the coins minted in her name, using embroidery and Kozo paper. Husain’s work addresses the erasure from collective consciousness of the only Mughal Empress of India, whose accomplishments in the arena of arts equal, if not surpass, those of most men who ruled India.

Nur Jahan, 2017.
Glass, handmade paper (kozo, mitumata, gampi fibres), sumi, acrylic paint and embroidery
243.84 x 121.92 cm, 121.92 x 91.44 cm.
Courtesy the artist

Zinnia Naqvi /
5 / 21

Zinnia Naqvi

Born in 1991 in Pickering, ON (Canada)
Lives and works between Toronto and Montreal (Canada)

Ziinia Naqvi received a Bachelor in Fine Arts in Photography from Ryerson University, Toronto and is currently a Master’s in Fine Arts Candidate from Concordia University, Montreal. Her work has been shown in Toronto at the Ryerson Image Centre, Gallery 44, the Koffler Gallery and in Montreal at Articule and the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery. Her work has been shown internationally at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Uppsala International Short Film Festival and the International Institute of Contemporary Art and Theory in Mangalia, Romania. Naqvi’s work uses a combination of photography, video, archival footage and installation. Her past work has dealt with issues of post-colonialism, trans-culturalism, language and gender politics. Using archival objects allows viewers to step back and think critically about issues that affect diasporic communities over time and place.

Dear Nani is a project that addresses issues of gender performance and colonial mimicry through the family archive. The photographs included in this project are of the artist’s maternal grandmother, Rhubab Tapal. Nani is performing the act of cross-dressing by wearing several different outfits that belong to her husband. The photographs were taken on the newly-weds’ honeymoon in Quetta and Karachi, Pakistan, in 1948. The artist’s grandfather, Gulam Abbas Tapal, is the photographer and presumed director of the photo session. 

Nani with Moustache, 2017.
Inkjet print
76 x 101 cm.
Courtesy the artist

Samina Islam /
6 / 21

Samina Islam

Born in 1966 in Karachi (Pakistan)
Lives and works in Karachi (Pakistan)

Samina Islam is a mixed-media artist who was born to a Pakistani father and Dutch mother. When she was four years old, she moved to The Netherlands where she spent her next twenty-five years. Being exposed to two opposite cultures, Islam has always been intrigued by people, traditions and surroundings. The quest for self, through her art, is an ongoing process for her. Islam moved back to Pakistan later in life where she started her endeavors in art. She got her Fine Art Diploma in 2002 with Distinction from Studio Art. She pursued her love for photography by attaining a Photography diploma and incorporating photography in her art practice. She incorporates needlework on top of her images, which are printed on cloth. Islam enjoys experimentation and works with various media to achieve the effect she is looking for. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and has been part of a textile art residency in Oaxaca (Mexico) and Studio Kura residency in Fukuoka (Japan). She lives and works in Karachi, where she heads the Art Department of Karachi Grammar School (College section).

For her work on view at KB17, From Within, the figure of a young girl is seen floating in front of a tree. Islam states, “She is in a moment of nirvana, a transcendent state in which there is no suffering, desire, nor sense of self, and she is released from the effects of karma and the cycle of death and rebirth. Her body is transparent as if she floated out of her earthly body and became part of another universe.” For this work, Islam photographed an old tree she saw in Karachi. The artist believes trees have a mysterious and spiritual aura, which she wished to emphasize through the color green. From the flat, processed photograph, an image of the artist’s daughter emerges. Her dress is formed by net textile, its folds stitched by the artist’s own hand. Islam states, “In some way I am projecting myself through her.”

From Within, 2017 (Detail).
Textile and thread on inkjet on canvas
129 x 183 x 3 cm.
Collection of the artist

Farah Mahbub /
7 / 21

Farah Mahbub

Born in 1965 in Karachi (Pakstan)
Lives and works in Karachi (Pakistan)

Farah Mahbub was born and brought up in Karachi. Her visual journey has explored various photographic genres, ranging from fine art, commercial, architectural and landscape photography. Mahbub’s work has been exhibited both locally and internationally and has been published in books, most notably Journeys of the Spirit: Pakistan Art in the New Millennium. She joined the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in 1997 as a faculty member, where she has been ever since. Under her tenure, photography has evolved from a single class into an undergraduate minor spanning the Communication Design and Fine Art and Interior Design departments.

Farah Mahbub writes the following of her triptych for KB17: “As the city grows and expands with time, its magnitude and character experience alterations. These shifts happen at an unpredictable pace. The city is continuously including or excluding old structures. Hazrat Abdullah Shah Ghazi r.a shrine was, and still is, a significant Karachi landmark. This Sufi saint has for centuries been a witness to beautiful, restless Karachi. Hazrat Abdullah Shah Ghazi Baba r.a was martyred in the year 773 and was buried on top of a hill in Karachi. He was a Syed (lineage of the Holy Prophet of Islam). And his burial site for the longest time was a hut on this high ground, which much later, around the 1960s, was built upon to create a mazaar (shrine), with several other modifications assembled over the years. All my life I have felt blessed to be conscious of the saint by the seashore. I can’t imagine the city without his presence.”

 

 

Shahenshah-e-Karachi, 2017.
Inkjet paper
Triptych, 50.8 cm x 76.2 cm each
Courtesy the artist

Wardah Bukhari /
8 / 21

Wardah Bukhari

Born in 1988 in Multan (Pakistan)
Lives and works in Lahore (Pakistan)

Wardah Naeem Bukhari earned her Bachelor’s of Graphic Design from the Multan College of Arts, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan (2010) and completed her Master’s in Visuals Arts from the National College of Arts, Lahore (2012). She continues her studio practice while teaching as visiting lecturer at Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan. Bukhari was Guest Curator of the first studio BQ Artist-in-Residence program (2015) in Murree. She was selected to participate in the International-Artist-In-Residence program at Arthub, Arizona, United States (2016). She was also invited for an artist talk at South Asian Women Collective, New York (2016). Bukhari works in various mediums, including drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, photography, video, digital art and performance art. Her works concentrate on the boundaries between inside and outside, content and form, feeling and shape, impression and expression. She has participated in several group exhibitions in Multan, Lahore, Islamabad, Karachi, as well as in the UK, Turkey, the UAE and the US. 

In her video on view at KB17, Bukhari captures a simple domestic act: A woman’s hands kneading bread. By focusing on the movement of a woman’s hands working dough, Bukhari seeks to explore the idea of suppression. On the surface, this video is about an everyday chore. But there are also undercurrents of a woman’s search for pleasure, providing a link between what she calls “female task and female fantasy.” As the artist states, “It is a celebration of a woman’s freedom of body and her freedom from male dominance.”

Still from Suppression, 2017.
Video, 12 min.
Courtesy the artist

Noman Siddiqui /
9 / 21

Noman Siddiqui

Born in 1980 in Karachi (Pakistan)
Lives and works in Karachi (Pakistan)

Noman Siddiqui graduated from the Central Institute of Art and Craft, Karachi in 2005. He is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited in various group shows, including “Microcosm” at Gandhara-Art Space, Karachi; “Movement” at ArtChowk, Karachi; “Attaining Heights” at VM Art Gallery, Karachi; “Usman aur Mein” at KOEL Gallery, Karachi; “Memoirs of the Future” at Alhamra Art Gallery, Lahore; “Pursukoon Karachi” at Arts Council Karachi; “Mad in Karachi 3D II” at ArtChowk, Karachi; and “Aghaz-e-safer” at Frere Hall, Karachi. He also curated the show “Unwriting Thoughts” at IVS Gallery, Karachi, in 2016, and attended the Fourth Sanat Residency Program, Karachi in 2017.

For KB17 Noman Siddiqui has created an installation comprised of flowers and fiberglass bullets. He writes: “Keeping in mind this city and events, I have created an installation that consists of two mounds: one of flowers and the other of bullets. These objects are opposite in nature and yet linked when seen with the eyes of a witness. The flowers shall wilt and die like the flowers left on graves by loved ones, while the bullets shall remain untarnished, much like the permanent feeling of absence caused by death.”

Mounds, 2017.
Fiberglass, industrial paint, rose petals
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist

Philippe Druillet /
10 / 21

Philippe Druillet

Born in 1944 in Toulouse (France)
Lives and works in Paris (France)

Philippe Druillet is a versatile all around artist and a pioneer in many areas (Design, Photography, Painting). Together with his friend Moebius, they broke the traditional barriers of the graphic novel. Druillet has authored many books featuring the adventures of Lone Sloane, an intergalactic adventurer who travels the universe trying to save it from Chaos. His work has been translated into English, Italian, Japanese, Dutch and Chinese. In 1998 Druillet was presented with France's highest cultural honor: Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters.

On view at KB17 are images from Philippe Druillet’s iconic graphic novel La Nuit (The Night).  Druillet drew them between 1973 and 1976, during the agony of Nicole, his first wife, due to cancer. The artwork is very dark and pessimistic. It greatly influenced many European artists.

La Nuit, 1976.
Copyright Editions Glénat. All rights reserved.
Special thanks to Editions Glénat, M. Philippe Druillet, M. Jacques Glénat, and M. Benoît Cousin.

Nayan Kulkarni /
11 / 21

Nayan Kulkarni

Born in 1969 in Norwich (UK)
Lives and works in London (UK)

Trained in sculpture at Birmingham and then The Slade Schools of Art (1993 & 1997) Nayan Kulkarni is currently a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art (Naktam: Speculative Cinematic Movement). His research is developing new ways to understand the complex formations of experience and meaning generated by artificial light in the city. The perceptual, intellectual, ethical and technological dimensions of light as medium and idea are fundamental elements in his research. Nayan is interested in the effects and affects of cinematic imagining on human experience, personal identity and the built environment. This interest is expressed in light, sound, video and performance-based works in galleries and the public realm. Recent works include; Maroon (2017, Leicester), Blade (2017, Hull City of Culture), Hryre (2012, Chester) and Mirrie Dancers 2012 (Shetland). He is currently installing a major permanent urban light installation, The Golden Hour, across Hull city centre.

Of his work for KB17, Nayan Kulkarni writes: “Combining elements of location and studio- based recordings Nayan will be making a new work for the Biennial. Exploring the nocturnal urban mise-en-scene as a site of reverie and surveillance, the work will explore the City as ill mannered, its atmospheres contingent upon themes that overlay each other in voices that collide. These constructed atmospheres are an emergent phenomena experienced in momentary equilibriums within a dynamic whole. There is no fixed arrangement that could be inferred to be a composition. Illuminating space is to rend darkness, to tear it apart, shred and fragment it, distribute it, differentiate and articulate it. Every lamp produces a radiant micro-politics of space, an organisation and articulation of its local value. Where there is no light, there is no use, no value. Lamps together project an image of politics onto space and in turn produce spaces for preferred activities. Furthermore, it makes them visible, it brings them into the tattered black. Where there was no use the rend can produce. In the cut space is rendered, made into an image of activity, that is also a space for activity: A twin channel work for a twin site production.”

 

 

Ricochet, 2017.
Twin channel video for two flat screens
Courtesy the artist

Eduardo Gómez Ballesteros /
12 / 21

Eduardo Gómez Ballesteros

Born in 1964 in Madrid (Spain)
Lives and works in Madrid (Spain)

Eduardo Gómez Ballesteros has a degree in Psychology (UAM, Spain) and a Doctorate in Fine Arts (UCM, Spain), with a doctoral thesis on the Cambodian genocide. His long artistic career is marked by the use of different artistic techniques: photography, drawing, etching, video-installation and public art. His main artistic project, the GENOCIDE PROJECT, consists of several series of works made by him based on archival images of political violence and genocide. It is a research project focused on artistic practice, history, philosophy and pedagogy. The art pieces created are fed by archival images of victims of violent political processes, collected in the countries of origin of the conflict, and photographs of places of torture, confinement and execution, carried out in the present. He has had numerous solo exhibitions in the Dominican Republic, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Lebanon, Portugal, the US, Colombia, Brazil, Germany, Japan, France and the UK, as well as in his native Spain. Currently he works as a professor of Contemporary Art and Culture and Audiovisual Language at the International University of La Rioja (UNIR).

For KB17 Eduardo Gómez Ballesteros has submitted work from his series HIROSHIMA, S-21 and BAS LA SOCIETÉ SPECTACULAIRE-MARCHANDE. Of HIROSHIMA, the artist writes: “The intentional killing of more than two hundred and fifty thousand people, in the eyes of the whole world, should be unanimously recognized as a mass murder. From images from the archive of The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, I converted some of these portraits of victims into photographic masks for a performance. This consisted of asking the participants, dressed all in black, to move and pose on a dark stage with the image as a mask. Thus, the photos take off from the intimate, to become a collective, moving device. I intend to anticipate a poetics of the ephemeral and the volatile.”

HIROSHIMA 1, 2010.
Digital photograph
130 x 52 cm.
Courtesy the artist
Curated by Carlos Acero Ruiz.

Lucila Quieto /
13 / 21

Lucila Quieto

Born in 1977 in Buenos Aires (Argentina)
Lives and works in Buenos Aires (Argentina)

Lucila Quieto studied photography at the Escuela de Fotografía Creativa, Buenos Aires subsequently used photography, painting and collage as part of her artistic practice. Her work, Arqueología de la ausencia (Archeology of Absence, 1999-2001), has been exhibited in many countries, including Argentina, Italy, France and the UK. Her work has also been included in many joint exhibitions with other artists who are also children of disappeared parents, including Amontonados: Temporalidades de la infancia (2010), Anacronías (2011), Familias Q’heridas (2011), and Ficciones: Imágenes que construyen sentidos sobre el pasado (2017). In 2010 she co-founded Colectivo de hijos, a group of children of disappeared parents who, through art groups such as the Club del Collage and published books, have tried to influence public policies directed at the relatives of victims of the 1976-1983 Argentine dictatorship. Currently she works in the photography section of the Archivo Nacional de la Memoria, located in the former clandestine torture and detention center, the ESMA. 

Carlos Alberto Quieto disappeared five months before the artist’s birth. In Arqueología de la ausencia, on view at KB17, Quieto combines fiction and biography, as well as performance and photography, to explore the disappearance of her father. Rather than just focusing on her own family history, however, she also invited other children of disappeared parents to participate in the work, placing an advertisement in a branch of HIJOS (Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio) with the following tempting offer: “Now you can have the picture you always wanted.” Quieto remembers: “I asked every son or daughter to look for a photograph of their parents. I then reproduced the images as slides. I projected them on the wall and asked the children to insert themselves between the camera and the image.” The experiment resulted in 35 black-and-white photographs each showing a playful and fictional scene that imagines alternative futures for those families. The images of Arqueología de la ausencia are thus answers to a disturbing question: what might have happened had the disappeared survived? Quieto’s montages speak of a time that is neither in the past nor in the present but in what she calls “a third time,” an invented, dream-like temporality, a dimension where everything, even the impossible, seems plausible.

Arqueología de la ausencia, 1999-2001.
Analog photography digitally reproduced
224 x 30 cm.
Courtesy the artist
Photograph of the artist by Kaloian Santos Cabrera
Curated by Carlos Acero Ruiz.

Jesús Hdez-Güero /
14 / 21

Jesús Hdez-Güero

Born in 1983 in Havana (Cuba)
Lives and works between Havana (Cuba) and Caracas (Venezuela)

Jesús Hdez-Güero attended the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts, Havana, between 1999 and 2003. He later entered the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana, earning his degree in Fine Arts in 2009. His work is not limited to a specific artistic medium, but depends on the idea to develop. His works have been presented in different exhibitions, including: Desplazamientos, la mayoría invisible: A Nation in a Few Words, Alejandro Otero Museum (MAO), Caracas, Venezuela; The Object and the Image (This is not a Chair Either), Concrete Space Project, Miami, USA; 9th Edition of the IILA-PHOTOGRAPHY Prize, Museum of Contemporary Art (MACRO), Rome, Italy; Iconocracia: Contemporary Cuban Photography, Atlantic Center for Modern Art (CAAM), Las Palmas de Gran Canarias (2016) and the Basque Center for Contemporary Art (Artium), Vitoria, Spain (2015); Zona Franca, 12th Biennial of Havana, Historical-Military Complex Morro-Cabaña, Havana, Cuba; The Spaces Between: Contemporary Art from Havana, Bildmuseet, Umeå University, Sweden (2015) and at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (2014); TOUCHED, Liverpool Biennial, Visitor Center, Liverpool, UK; Experimental Video and Video Art: Artists from Cuba, Antioquia Museum, Medellín, Colombia; VII Biennial of Gwangju, South Korea; and States of Exchange: Artists from Cuba, Institute of International Visual Arts (IniVA), London, UK.

The video Minutos de odio contra sí mismo (Minutes of hate against oneself) shows a close up of the Venezuelan flag receiving eight bullets, which, one by one, replace the stars that normally adorn it. In his work, the artist reflects on the attacks, mutations and re-significances of media, social and political discourse that have caused the flag, and the nation, to suffer to such an extent that violence has became an integral part of Venezuelan identity.

Still from Minutos de odio contra sí mismo, 2014-2015.
Video, 1:11 min. NTSC
Ed. 5 + P/A
Brillembourg Capriles Collection, US (Ed. 2/5)
Kadist (Sur) Collection, US (Ed. 3/5)
Curated by Carlos Acero Ruiz.

Gilda Pérez /
15 / 21

Gilda Pérez

Born in 1954 in Havana (Cuba)
Lives and works in Miami (USA)

Gilda Pérez is among the pioneers of modern Cuban women photographers. She was one of the first photographers (and the only woman in a group of six) to exhibit in the United States during the Cold War, at the University of California in 1982. She has had numerous solo exhibitions in Cuba, Spain, Switzerland, Canada and Venezuela and been part of group shows in more than 50 countries. Her most recent group exhibition was ¡Cuba, Cuba! 65 Years of Photography presented by the International Center of Photography, New York in 2015. Her work is included in renowned photography collections, including the Mexican Council of Photography (Mexico) and the Musée de l´Elysée (Switzerland). For 20 years she made Venezuela her home, but now lives and works in the US.

Gilda Pérez is exhibiting work from her series Out of Home for KB17. Of her practice, the artist writes: “As a photographer I have always been looking for spaces of quotidian life that do not get enough attention from us. I am not talking about the myth of photographers who see what common people do not see. I am talking about things that do not seem important: an abandoned doll in a yard, a lonely man contemplating a landscape, a rundown gas station, an old fashioned car parked in front of an iconic theater in Havana, my own house. I am also interested in the lives of ordinary people: farmers, workers, passengers. Those are my punctums (to put it in the words of Barthes). My punctums are the small realities inside reality. In that sense, my work is influenced by photographers such as Walker Evans, David ‘Chim’ Seymour, Dorothea Lange and Imogen Cummingham.”

Out of Home, 1994-2014.
Digital print
50 x 50 cm.
Courtesy the artist
Curated by Carlos Acero Ruiz.

Jason Mena /
16 / 21

Jason Mena

Born in 1974 in New York (USA)
Lives and works between Puerto Rico and Mexico City (Mexico)

Jason Mena is an interdisciplinary artist examining patterns and contradictions in a social formation, focusing mainly on the informal sector, its broad economic structure, and its prevalence and diversity in all social classes. He received a BFA from Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Diseño (EAPD) in Puerto Rico and attended Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts (Bard College MFA Program) in New York, earning his Master's degree from the School of Visual Arts (SVA). His work has been exhibited individually and as part of collectives in venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC) in Costa Rica; Modern Art Museum (MAM) in the Dominican Republic; Unicorn Centre for Art in Beijing; National Museum of Fine Arts (MNBA) in Argentina; Hessel Museum of Art in New York; Ex Teresa Arte Actual and Carrillo Gil Contemporary Art Museum (MACG) in Mexico City; Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts (CCA) and Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in California; National Center for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) in Moscow; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams; Puerto Rico Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) and the 2nd and 3rd editions of The San Juan Poly/Graphic Triennial, among others.

Jason Mena has submitted a video for KB17 called Fault Line as well as a series of photographs entitled Failed States. Fault Line is a drawing in motion; a mark that delineates geographies, that conforms and forms, but also one that represents occupation and rupture. In a symbolic gesture, a continuous line is drawn with chalk marking the perimeter of Unidad Habitacional Nonoalco-Tlatelolco. Here, chalk—a porous material frequently employed for didactic purposes—represents and traces a jagged and rough historic route that paradoxically disrupts the linear conception of history. Failed States, a commentary on the G-7 group of industrialized nations, is a photographic documentation of an action, where the body is employed as a geopolitical metaphor ultimately subdued to its immediate context.

Still from Fault Line, 2012.

Video, 2:24 min. Resolution: 4:3
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist
Curated by Carlos Acero Ruiz.

Elvin José Díaz Tolentino /
17 / 21

Elvin José Díaz Tolentino

Born in 1979 in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic)
Lives and works in in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic)

Elvin José Díaz Tolentino graduated from the Pedro Henriquez Ureña National University (UNPHU), Santo Domingo (2003), and did a postgraduate course in Performance Studies at FLACSO, Santo Domingo (2006). Currently he is pursuing a Master ́s degree in Visual Arts in the Dominican Republic. Since 2014, his “BINATIONAL PROJECT” has explored the theme of the border, interconnection and exchange between two cultures: Haitian and Dominican. The artist has had more than 50 group and solo exhibitions as well as participated in art contests at the Museum of Art in the Bronx and the Museo del Barrio, both in New York. In 2010, he was selected to be part of DVD-Project, a travelling international video-art project organized by Stichting Idee-fixe (The Netherlands). In 2014 the artist presented an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Santo Domingo that explored Video-Art, Video-Installation, Video-Performance and documentation through the video of performance. His work has received many awards in the Dominican Republic.

Elvin José Díaz Tolentino writes of Placenta, his work on view at KB17: “This is a video performance that spawns from an action that takes place at the national border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic in a place called ‘No Man’s Land,’ where a Haitian and a Dominican man blow up a balloon so big they both can get inside until the pressure and movement make it burst. While trying to remain in the balloon, they begin to interact, to converge until the object takes their shape. This video performance provides different views of the same event: the horizontal and frontal views allow us to see in detail how these two men struggle to remain in the same space, and an overhead one permits us to witness the dilemma of two bodies trying to coexist in a limited and fragile space.”

Still from Placenta, 2016.
Digital video, 9:10 min.
Courtesy the artist
Curated by Carlos Acero Ruiz.

Mayra Martell /
18 / 21

Mayra Martell

Born in 1979 in Ciudad Juárez (Mexico)
Lives and works in Mexico City (Mexico)

Mayra Martell is a documentary photographer from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. She has worked primarily in areas of Latin America and Africa subjected to forced disappearance. Her largest projects in Latin America include Falsos positivos (2009), Cerro de Petare (2007), and Ensayo de la identidad (2005-2010). Falsos positivos, carried out in the impoverished outskirts of Bogota, documents the tragedy of young men who were kidnapped, killed, and presented as guerrilla casualties by the Colombian army. Cerro de Petare portrays everyday life in one of Caracas’ biggest and most violent slums. Ensayo de la identidad is a five-year project about the disappearance of women in Ciudad Juárez, a city whose social fabric has been torn by violence. Martell has received many distinctions and awards. At the 4th International Photobook Festival in Kassel, Germany, she won first prize in the Reviewer Award 2011 and second prize in the Dummy Award 2011. She is currently working on a project called Sexy Mafia which proposes an exploration of the concept of beauty in Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico´s main drug-trafficking city.

For KB17, Mayra Martell has presented work from her series on Ciudad Juárez and the Western Sahara. Of her Ciudad Juárez series, she writes: “It’s been five years since the downtown started to disappear, becoming a battleground for drug cartels, the scene of murdered women and the vanishing place for countless people. Ciudad Juárez is the paramount example of a society that is consuming itself without being able to stop.  I believe that there is something there in those spaces that makes people forget that other places exist; as if one had no past, like the city itself. Perhaps I like it because it has no memory, or at least not one as obvious as other places where I’ve been. It’s as if it had collapsed and something broke inside; it’s like the life-essence of someone in disgrace, so overwhelmed by her loss that she has become stuck, stranded in the same place; a place of sadness. Juárez is like an old and abandoned kitchen; as the sun rises, buses can be seen roaming about like iron cockroaches crawling on a dirty, retched floor; a floor in ruins; a lonely floor.”

 

Downtown Ciudad Juárez, 2010-2015.
Digital photograph
90 x 60 cm
Courtesy the artist
Curated by Carlos Acero Ruiz.

Roxana Nagygellér /
19 / 21

Roxana Nagygellér

Born in 1963 in Alajuela (Costa Rica)
Lives and works in San José (Costa Rica)

 Roxana Nagygellér received a Diploma of Photography Arts and Sciences from the College of Alajuela, Costa Rica in 1997. She has also carried out independent studies of photography, videocreation, politics and cultural management, installation and set design, traditional and artistic "bindings," as well as the history of art and philosophy at various museums and artistic production centers, including the University of Costa Rica and the Cultural Center of Spain. She has produced editorial, documentary and commercial photography for several magazines. The artist has had six solo exhibitions and has participated in more than 30 group shows of photography and video in Costa Rica, France, the Dominican Republic, the Netherlands, Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua. She was selected for the Central American Biennial of Visual Arts in several editions, as well as for other national and international competitions

Roxana Nagygellér has submitted photographs from her series Letters to Nicolas for KB17. This is a series of portraits of migrant men in Costa Rica. This is a continuation of earlier work in which she explored the migrant experience for women. That series, entitled People in their Place, was an easier task for the artist. She states: “The work with women was fluid and fun for me. In Letters to Nicolas the approach to strangers was more complex. I felt more questioned, more watched. It was more difficult to break the ice with men. I converted the photographs into diptychs, generating a dialogue between texts, clouds and portraits. The letters are like messages carried by the wind. Written by migrant children from slums in the capital, they attempted to answer the questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? These are questions we all ask ourselves at some point in our lives.”

Letters to Nicolas I, II and III, 2001.
Digital photograph
61 x 46 cm.
Courtesy the artist
Curated by Carlos Acero Ruiz.

Sara Roitman /
20 / 21

Sara Roitman

Born in 1953 in Santiago (Chile)
Lives and works in Quito (Ecuador)

Throughout her trajectory as a photographer, Sara Roitman has incorporated video art, installation, objects, neon, embroidery and sewing into her repertoire of artistic practices. Her work is about creating and rearranging spaces of reflection and speculation. Her work has been exhibited in Ecuador, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Israel, the US and Singapore. In 2009 she published IMPERDIBLE, a photographic book of her artwork that won several international awards, including the Gold Medal, Sappi in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her artworks are in private collections and in public institutions.

Sara Roitman writes of her work on view at KB17: “Combining works of different series under a single title is not uncommon in my artistic practices. I have been working with the human body for many years from different aspects and perspectives. I picture the geographies of bodies; I picture the body as territory; I displace the body and make it fade. The photographic works: S/T I and S/T II portray the body after the soul abandons it. The portrait is an attempt to shape a body and its soul fading away and the emptiness that is perceived in its displacement. In the works Territorios I and Territorios II I create fictional geographies of the same bodies that make us doubt if it is about more than one person in the same territory.”

 

S/T I, 2016.
Photograph
70 x 105 cm.
Courtesy the artist
Curated by Carlos Acero Ruiz.

Syed Ammad Tahir
21 / 21

Syed Ammad Tahir

Born in 1986 in Karachi (Pakistan)
Lives and works in Karachi (Pakistan)

Syed Ammad Tahir graduated from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in 2008 with a Bachelor’s in Fine Art. He has had one solo exhibition at the Goethe-Institut, Karachi and has participated in several group exhibitions in Pakistan and abroad including “And Nothing but the Truth: the Problem of Parrhesia,” curated by Zarmeené Shah at Koel Gallery, Karachi, as well as several performance-based exhibitions at the Amin Gulgee Gallery, Karachi. His work was nominated for the Rangoonwala Thesis Scholarship and the Zahoor ul Akhlaque Drawing Portfolio Award. Tahir reviews exhibitions and regularly writes for the Herald (Pakistan). He has taught drawing in the Department of Fine Art at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture from 2009 – 2012, and at Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s Institute of Science and Technology from 2010 – 2014, and taught History of Art at the Textile Institute of Pakistan in 2012. He is now a Lecturer in the Department of Communication Design at IVS. Tahir was recently nominated as an exchange scholar by the US State Department to teach drawing and 2D Design at Kennesaw State University, Atlanta, USA.

Of his work for KB17, Syed Ammad Tahir writes: “Talk to Me is a performance work which will take place in real-time at one of the venues of the Karachi Biennale through live streaming of the performance via laptop and a projector/LCD screen. The artist will be streaming from an unknown location for three hours and will remain open to answering non-scripted questions by the audience during the entire stream of the performance. The performance relives the moments of cyber chat that I had with strangers during my teenage years and will allow the strangers / audience visiting the biennale to become part of my virtual fantasy.”

Talk to Me, 2017.
Live video stream, 180 min.

3D Tour: