Refugee Heritage, Photo Luca Capuano
POSITIONS #4, four artists in dialogue
Gluklya, Naeem Mohaiemen and Sandi Hilal & Alessandro Petti
01/12/2018 – 28/04/2019
Curators: Charles Esche, Diana FranssenFor Positions #4 we have invited four artists; Gluklya (Natalia Pershina-Jakimanskaya), Naeem Mohaiemen and the duo Sandi Hilal & Alessandro Petti. These artists share a link to art as activism, and all use art as a basis to talk about the pressures produced by the burdens of history, injustice and political change. The works make use of the languages of film, drawing, architecture, the archive, texts, education and fashion to build up a story about particular parts of the world. They bring visitors closer to understanding conditions on the ground in places both nearby and far away from Eindhoven. Together, they sketch out a picture of the continuous human presence in an uncertain world and how new solutions and possibilities are emerging in difficult situations. Whether exploring the legacy of the Non-Aligned Movement, or looking at the current situation of migrants and refugees in Amsterdam or Bethlehem, the artists seek to turn historical failures and contemporary strife into learning situations from which a viewer can find new inspiration.
In the process these artists use various narrative forms, which are investigated through real settings, objects or persons. Often the artistic practices sit at the crossroads of cultural anthropology, documentary filmmaking, self-organisation and collaboration. All four artists teach us – each in a different way – about the capacity of different minorities and marginal communities to cope with difficult life situations and thereby become uplifting tales of survival and care. The exhibition will also feature the Tree School, a project developed with communities in Palestine and the North East of Brazil and developed with Grupo Contrafilé.