At the DIFC Gulf Art Fair in 2007, Bidoun designed an outdoor lounge on Fort Island at Madinat Jumeirah, showing work by Susan Hefuna, Ala Ebtekar, and Amir H Fallah, and a specially commissioned series of cushions by Dubai-based artists Nadine Kanso, Loreta Bilinskaite, Haig Aivazian, Amna Al Zaabi and Raghda Bukhash.
A booth screened two rolling programmes of video, curated by Bidoun and the Third Line, that included work by Akram Zaatari, Wael Shawky, Ahmet Ogut, Iman Issa and Solmaz Shahbazi, among others. A library included a selection of rare books and magazines on contemporary Arab and Iranian art. Bidoun co-hosted the Collectors’ Night on the opening evening of the fair with Bloomberg.
June 29, 2006
‘Fine Print: Alternative Media’ at P.S.1 at Contemporary Art Center, New York
A series of public programs co-organized by P.S.1 with innovative publications from New York and nationwide, including The Believer, Cabinet, Clear Cut Press, Esopus, Influence, The Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, Mass Appeal, n+1, The Relay Project, and Topic, as well as Bidoun. Tracking Bidoun presented a talk by artist and geographer Trevor Paglen on the CIA’s use of civilian planes to ‘render’ and ‘disappear’ suspected terrorists. Paglen also took on his recent trip to Kabul on the trail of secret prisons, black sites in the US, as well as what unmarked airplanes can tell us, and what they cannot. Thomas Keenan, head of Bard College’s Human Rights Project, acted as respondent.
A film night curated by Bidoun member Tirdad Zolghadr, featuring works by Hito Steyerl (November), Dirk Herzog (Pelmeni/Blini), Fikret Atay (Lalo’s Story) and Giovanni Carmine and Christoph Buchel (PSYOP).
With thanks to Artschool Palestine
Counter Gallery, London, and touring to The Galleries Show, Extracity, Antwerp, April 20-25, 2006
A series of week-long exhibitions curated by Bidoun in which artists were given carte blanche not only in terms of content, but are also free to behave as artists or curators in absentia.
A series of posters alongside a small number of supermarket commodities, mixing, in the words of the artists, “poetry with detergent”. The emphasis here is on the commodification of mainstream media traits of the Middle East, but also on a wry parody of the mythical hopes that are still pinned on the commodity itself as a capitalist agent for change.
Week 2: Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige: THE LOST FILM
An absorbing travel narrative recounting the search for a lost film document, alongside an extract from a video by filmmaker and researcher Akram Zaatari, This Day, which peruses persistent Orientalist patterns through the history of desert photography.
Week 3: Faouzi Rouissi
A writer born in Algiers and barely known in the West, Rouissi is appreciated in local circles for his outspoken style and undaunted prose. Living in exile in Paris since 1994, Rouissi travels widely, publishing a wide array of publications ranging from travel guidebooks to critical anthologies of land art, all in his native Kabyli. Here, Rouissi proposes a selection of paintings and drawings focusing on what he terms “the contagious poetics of envy”. His selection includes a work by the SHAHRZAD collective, from the series I Love You But I Don’t Trust You Anymore (2004), plus painter Rachid Izdaman’s Victimes d’extrêmes remords (2005), and photographic works by Solmaz Shahbazi.
With thanks to Carl Freedman and Jo Stella-Sawicka from Counter Gallery.
