Transart alum & advisor Syowia Kyambi in Berlin exhibition
open encounters
Open Encounters, Abdullah Qureshi
Through painting, filmmaking, and cultural production, Toronto-based artist Abdullah Qureshi deals with personal and collective histories, traumatic pasts, and sexuality. Drawing on the autobiography, as well as curatorial and collaborative approaches, Qureshi‘s recent work examines formations of queer identity and resistance in Muslim migratory contexts.
The show takes both the artist‘s work and on-going research as a starting point for a visual dialogue with other artists, theorists and cultural producers that are invited to participate with their works. In a rather personal 1:1 setting, Abdullah will meet old and recent companions that he met on his way from Pakistan via Europe to Canada and discuss engaged collaborations, representation and collective memories. Artistic practice as a conversation around urgent social discourses and cultural phenomena.
The works by Abdullah Qureshi, Tasnim Bagdadi, Sara Khan, Syowia Kyambi, Natasha Jozi and Gloria Zein are on view from March 10 until April 23.
Opening hours: Tuesday - Saturday 12-7pm
ABDULLAH QURESHI is a Pakistani-born artist, curator, and educator. Within his practice, he is interested in using painting, filmmaking, and collaborative methodologies to address per-sonal histories, traumatic pasts, and sexuality. Through his on-going doctoral project, Mythological Migrations: Imagining Queer Muslim Utopias, he examines formations of queer identity and resistance in Muslim migratory contexts.
“In my paintings, the autobiography, traumatic pasts, and identity have emerged as recurring themes, often manifesting in the form of interior objects, abstract landscapes, and face-less portraits of queer friends. To create my images, I draw on a range of influences and experiences, which include memories, the home, everyday surroundings, and lovers and friends I encounter.”
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SYOWIA KYAMBI is an interdisciplinary artist and curator whose media spans across pho- tography, video, drawing, sound, sculpture and performance installation. She holds an MFA from Transart Institute (2020) and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2002). Syowia is based in Nairobi and of Kenyan/German origin.
The connection between the psyche, history and the entanglement that exists within non-stagnant identities are present in her creative process as she is pushing beyond simple categorisation looking for acknowledgement and healing: I examine how our contemporary human experience is influenced by constructed histories, creating installations that often include a performative practice to narrate stories and activate objects, exploring cultural identities, linking them to issues of loss, memory, race, and gender.
With ‘Kaspale’, Kyambi created a character, that is devised to intervene in spaces charged with colonial histories/activities. ‘Kaspale’s Archive Intrusion, The Vortex series’ (2019) arrives to a space of timelessness and exists in a realm not bound by time nor space, it is here nor there, neither present nor past.
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The new gallery and exhibition space is a joint effort between art gallery ARTCO and independent curator Benjamin Merten with his platform THX AGAIN. Their shared curatorial mindset is driven by an interest in cultural productions from all parts of the world and a profound belief in global and local responsibility.