Waiting for Omar Gatlato: Contemporary Art from Algeria and its Diaspora. Curated By Natasha Marie Llorens Opening Reception: Friday, October 25, 2019, 6 – 8pm On view October 26 – March 15, 2020 Design credit: Eider Corral    Waiting for Omar Gatlato is a survey of contemporary art by Algerian artists and by those in its diaspora. The project expressly refuses thematic axes, such as “memory” or “exile”, “the violence of the civil war”, in favor of the open-ended framework Algerian film critic and lawyer Wassyla Tamzali sets out in her eponymous volume, published in Algiers in 1979. In her book, Tamzali argues that Merzak Allouache’s 1976 feature film Omar Gatlato represents a turn toward the individual in Algerian society, their desires and the contradictions they struggle with. This exhibition proposes that an analogous ouverture vers le quotidien is taking place in today’s art scenes and, indeed, even in its streets. The Algerian context is hard to integrate into a broad regional history because it is exceptional, even when viewed together with its North African neighbors, Tunisia and Morocco. The specificity of its long, intimate colonial relationship to France, the fact that it experienced a violent Islamic coalition movement in the 1990s, decades […]

No Comment @ Oradea Vă invităm cu drag, sâmbătă 27 iulie 2019 orele 18, la deschiderea Expoziției de artă video ,,No Comment’’. Despre agresiunile asupra artistelor din Orientul Mijlociu. Vernisează Teodora Talhoș (Viena) curator și critic de artă. Expoziția va deschisă între 27.07- 16.08.2019. în Galerii de Artă-Reperaj. Cetate.Expun: Halida Boughriet – Franta, Fatoș Irwen – Turcia, Simin, Keramati – Iran, locuiește momentan in Canada, Tahmineh Monzavi – Iran. he exhibition will be open between 27.07 – 16.08 and can be visited from Tuesday to Friday, from 10am -18pm in Galeriile de Artă Reperaj – Romania What does it mean being an artist in a conflict zone? Moreover, what kind of hardships are encountered by women who work as artists in a totalitarian system that doesn’t allow freedom of speech? The exhibition titled “No comment” presents to the Romanian audience the video artworks of four female artists coming from – or with roots in – the Middle East. Their artworks express on the one hand a great sorrow, on the other hand a burning wish to carry on and to ignore the rules imposed on the artists by a restrictive, unpermissive system. Artists: Halida Boughriet, Fatoș Irwen, Simin Keramati, Tahmineh […]

OPENING October 12, 4-8 pm Azad Art Gallery, Tehran / Iran http://azadart.gallery/En/upcoming.aspx Artists: Halida Boughriet, Sharzad Changvalaee,  Fatoş Irwen, Simin Keramati, Tahmineh Monzavi, Balqis al´Rashid, Dilan Cudi Saruhan, Nil Yalter, Arzu Yayıntaş Every person should have the exclusive right to dispose of their body as they wish. The body should be an untouchable personal zone. But power structures of a governmental or religious nature as well as certain social notions do restrict this right. In particular, women of the so called Near and Middle East are struggling for this right. However the undifferentiated, fragmentary idea of the subordinated, voiceless woman in the hijab, who has to be freed by external forces – an idea very prominent in the West – represents a false role as well. Per se it denies the individual self-determination of the many different women in the aforementioned region – just like some of the governmental or religious institutions in charge. Art is a field where – more or less safely – anyone can exercise this right on the own body. In Vienna the use of the body as artistic medium is prominent due to the Viennese Actionism, the works of Austrian artist VALIE EXPORT and the feminist avantgarde of the 70s, most of whom explored the medium of video. The central starting point […]