Biennial

A Call to Preserve Memory Through a Future Gaze

How is Palestine represented in contemporary art, and how do Palestinian artists deal with the notions of memory and the past? Larissa Sansour raises in her work many questions concerning ideas of sanctity, homeland, and memory, in a manner that helps turning them into an illusion. In an analytical review and an in-depth critical gaze, scholar Housni Alkhateeb Shehada presents a broad picture of the place, the dialogue, the memory, and the conflict the figures are experiencing in the work recently presented by Sansour, in the Danish Pavilion, at the 58th Venice Biennale.

The Need for a New Revolution

The 6th Athens Biennale expressed the need for an urgent new self-identification of the confused contemporary community, either in local or in international terms - an urgent need of a new “revolution” that would define the 21st century. Christos Paridis writes about the exhibition, which he describes as an adult playground for those who are seeking questions or answers to present and future nightmares.

Looking for Neighbors

"From a local perspective, 'A Good Neighbour' brought hope to an art scene wrapped in a dark curtain." Hou Rf reviews the 15th Istanbul Biennial, curated by artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset.

A House is not a Home

In an age of great geopolitical stress, heightened nationalist sentiments and ethnic strife, and forced migrations, Christos Paridis visits the 6th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art and returns with thoughts about the search for a new home.

Metaphoric Sites

In the midst of the general lack of commitment of the central exhibition of the Venice Biennale this year, Avi Lubin visits three significant and interesting projects that offer metaphoric sites and spaces for experimentation and cooperation.

Two Point Perspective (part III): Forms of Refusal

 The third and final part of the essay by Noah Simblist focuses on Akram Zaatari’s use of dialogical exchange as an artistic strategy. While completely different in their dynamics and outcomes, Zaatari’s conversations with both Hagai Tamir and Avi Mograbi, he argues, reveal different degrees of both personal and political engagement and, at the same time, various forms of antagonism and refusal.

Two Point Perspective (part II): the Dialogical Exchange

In the second part of his essay analysing Akram Zaatari’s 2013 work “Letter to a Refusing Pilot,” Noah Simblist addresses a previous work by the artist that involved a conversation with filmmaker Avi Mograbi. Simblist is reading this work through the prism of dialogical exchange, referencing Grant Kester’s definition of “dialogical art,” as well as Ella Shohat’s observations on the identity politics of Mizrachi or Arab Jews.

Two Point Perspective (part I): Letter to a Refusing Pilot

In the summer of 1982, during Israel’s incursion into Southern Lebanon, a story swirled around the port town of Saida that acquired mythological flourishes: One of the Israeli fighter jets that were sent to the nearby Palestinian refugee camp of Ain El-Helweh, aborted its mission to bomb a school building, its pilot dropping the bombs into the sea instead. In a text for Tohu Magazine, that will be published in 3 parts, Noah Simblist dives into Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari’s work, Letter to a Refusing Pilot, instigated by this true story.

Under Construction

How should the Athens Biennale be shaped when everything in Greece is in flux? Christos Paridis on the  fifth and the sixth Athens Biennales - a 2-year artistic-political-social project.

Pages