Keith da Barbara

C'è tempo fino al 13 Aprile per vedere la selezione di disegni che la galleria Gladstone presenta nei suoi spazi di Bruxessel, la cui maggior parte non sono stati mostrate da quando sono state create alla fine degli anni '80. 

Realizzati per il suo iconico Pop Shop,  che aprì nel 1986,la serie di disegni in questa mostra è servita da materiale illustrativo per le stampe e altri articoli Pop Shop. Raffigurante una varietà di forme e figure nello stile caratteristico dell'artista, queste composizioni in bianco e nero dimostrano l'esplorazione a lungo termine del mezzo di disegno di Haring e la sua astuta capacità di creare una versione unica della realtà utilizzando un linguaggio visivo distinto.

Accompagna la mostra un bel catalogo con un saggio dello scrittore Brad Gooch sul significato storico di Haring's Pop Shop e la pratica del disegno accompagneranno la mostra.

Drummen di Terence Koh

Molto interessante il recente lavoro di Terence Koh presso la galleria Office Baroque di Bruxelles, visitabile fino al 22 Dicembre.

Un intervento installativo con disegni e ambientazione sonora visiva, costituita da un accumulo di terra con una strumentazione realizzata da un robot.

Body Talk: Feminism, Sexuality and the Body in the Work of Six African Women Artists

Fino al 3 Maggio è in corso una mostra sulla rappresentazione femminile africana del corpo vista da sei donne, al Wiels di Bruxelles. 

Body Talk addresses issues of feminism, sexuality and the body, as they play themselves out in the work of a generation of women artists from Africa active since the late 1990s. 

Bringing together artists from different parts of the continent, this group exhibition strives to define and articulate notions of feminism and sexuality in the work of women artists whose body (their own or that of others) serves as a tool, a representation or a field of investigation. In their work, the body manifests itself, whether sequentially or simultaneously, as a model, support, subject or object. 

The critical resonance of a specifically African – and black – feminism, together with the spread of artistic practices to international networks, have given shape to the development of a black feminist art. Stemming from the continent and the Diaspora, this black feminist art depicts bodies that continue a tradition of activism and freedom of speech, which it expresses with references to historical and political figures, and through the recreation of modern personas, of past and present bodies, all of which the artists appropriate.

Including:

Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Marcia Kure, Miriam Syowia Kyambi, Valérie Oka, Tracey Rose, Billie Zangewa.

Curator: Koyo Kouoh, assisted by Eva Barois De Caevel (RAW Material Company, Dakar)

Coordinating Curator: Caroline Dumalin (WIELS)

In coproduction with RAW Material Company, Dakar, FRAC Lorraine, Metz et Lunds Konsthall, Lund

With the support of Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte and Institut français

Petrit Halilaj al Wils di Bruxelles

Attualmente fra i miei artisti preferiti, ora in mostra a Bruxelles con la mostra "Poisoned by men in need of some love (Vitrines)" .

Press Release: 

Petrit Halilaj (b. 1986 in Kostërrc) was too young to remember the Berlin Wall falling but just old enough to remember all too well what came in its wake in what quickly became the ‘former’ Yugoslavia: ethnic conflict, war, forced exile, corruption, loss. Having fled with his family to a refugee camp as a young boy during the conflict in Kosovo, Halilaj’s history is as inseparable from war and exodus as is his oeuvre. Much as he may mine his experience, he rejects pathos or nostalgia for something at once far more optimistic, materially complex, politically resonant and, ultimately, critical. From the start, his use of commonplace materials and childhood memories has been an attempt to understand what such notions as ‘home’, ‘nation’ and ‘cultural identity’ could mean. His frequent combinations of earth, rubble, wood slats, live chickens and delicate drawings evoke a world at once intimately personal and utopian, all while revealing the inevitable realities of a far wider sociopolitical sphere. A bit like Joseph Beuys’s felt and fat, Halilaj’s mnemotechny of homeland and homelessness is not documentary, strictly speaking, but it is not romantic either. Instead, it walks an elegant tightrope between memory and actuality, the ingenuous and the fictive, the infinitely personal and commonly shared experience.

For the artist’s first exhibition in Belgium and his largest solo show to date, Halilaj extends his ongoing excavation of the Natural History Museum in Kosovo, a formerly remarkable and well-loved place before splintered nationalisms disintegrated what was once called Yugoslavia. At WIELS, he presents a vast, new installation comprised of a film that portrays the state of the ‘lost’ museum, along with a series of hand-sculpted copies of its animal remnants, based on a collection of found photographs and documents portraying the state they were in before they were removed to make way for a more nationalistic display of folk tradition and heritage instead. Halilaj’s new project attempts to give the museum and its specimens another life and a renewed political resonance.

The exhibition is organized by WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels and is curated by Elena Filipovic. An artist book will accompany the exhibition.

Petrit Halilaj (b. 1986 in Kostërrc; lives and works in Berlin, Kosovo, and Mantova) studied art at the Brera Academy in Milan. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions including: Pavilion of the Republic of Kosovo at the 55th Venice Biennial, 2013; Who does the earth belong to while painting the wind?! (Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, 2012) and Petrit Halilaj (Kunstraum Innsbruck, 2011); as well as in group exhibitions, including: The New Public (Museion, Bolzano), It doesn’t always have to be beautiful, unless it’s beautiful (The Kosovo Art Gallery, Prishtina), Lost and found (a nomadic initiative for contemporary art, Antwerp), 30 Künstler/30 Räume (Kunstverein Nürnberg/Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft, Nürnberg; all 2012), Ostalgia (New Museum, New York, 2011) and the 6th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (Berlin, 2010).