ARTISSIMA 2014
Podbielski Contemporary proudly presenting:
Loredana Nemes
Noga Shtainer
Shadi Ghadirian
Agnese Purgatorio
At Artissima 2014, we wish to present a significant and thematic dialogue between four voices of established mid career artists, who happen to be women, each working with the medium of photography and specifically portraits, in a dialogue that challenges stereotypes and incentivises the viewer to question photographic representation more in depth.
Ever since her breakthrough series Qajar (1998) was first shown, Shadi Ghadirian (Teheran, 1974) became internationally acclaimed and a spokeswoman for her country’s quest for emancipation and equal opportunities. Her iconic series has recently been showed in museums as, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, ”Light from the Middle East” (2013) and The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, ”Women Photographers from Iran and the Middle East” (2014).
Iran’s nuclear threat as well as its support to extremist Muslim causes in highly troubled areas is jeopardising world peace. Women, since the revolution, have always been in the frontline denouncing the threat, more specifically artists of the like of Shirin Neshat and presently Shadi Ghadirian.
Noga Shtainer (Israel, 1982) currently lives in Berlin. Her recent research has taken her to Ukraine, where she investigated the tragic fate of orphans and homes for special children, and to Brazil, where she confronted the aftermath of Mengele’s medical theory on twins after the II world war. More recently, Shtainer has returned to Berlin to observe the “Wagenburg” community in the outskirts of the city with a particular empathy borne from having grown up in a kibbutz.
Ukraine is the latest terrain for global challenges and threats. Behind the scene, everyday life stories of pain and misery are portrayed, in this specific case with artistic empathy and poetic vision.
Loredana Nemes, (Romania/Germany 1972), works in black and white on specific themes, portraying mankind in undergrounds, in her native country Romania, the Turkish male community observed through the windows of their secluded cafes in Kreuzberg, Berlin. Most of her recent works are shown in German institutions and major collections. Hatje Cantz has recently published her ”Beautiful” and “Beyond” series.
Turkey’s recent pro-Islamic shift is threatening acquired individual liberties and women’s rights. In Germany, the on going integration of the strong Turkish community is a sensitive issue and raises constant political debates.
Agnese Purgatorio is an artist who works primarily in photography, video, installation and performance. Born in Bari, Italy, she lives between Belgrade and Beirut. Her training as an artist began with a period of study in São Paulo, Brazil, at the Lasar Segall Museum and at the SESC Pompéia Factory. Agnese is currently having solo exhibitions at the Italian Cultural Institutes of Cologne and Strasbourg.
Purgatorio’s work is always political because she is passionately interested in the world, but at the same time her work is poetic because at each step it offers the measure of its distance from the realm of things, of decisions and of misfortunes; it is unconventional because it could not be more indifferent to situations, codes and customs of the contemporary art world. Her intention is certainly not that of reporting or “denouncing” the situation but that of giving a visible body to continuity, to the reversibility of the condition of clandestine refugees.
7 – 9 NOVEMBER 2014
Visit: https://www.artissima.art/
