FADE TO BLACK, BY AMER ALBARZAWI

This series of changes and their psychological toll is at the forefront of “Fade to Black,” a one-minute stop-motion film that Albarzawi filmed with actor Farah Presley. The two have lived together in Istanbul, Turkey, since the end of 2014 and began working on the film in March. Stop-motion seemed like a “new way” of portraying the effects of the war as well as an accessible one, with the materials they needed easily attainable, Albarzawi said. “I like stop-motion because we can use many of materials around us,” he said.

Each frame speaks to a moment from the months Albarzawi lived in Raqqa as the city watched its former way of life disappear, he said. It is more important than ever for Syrian artists to keep producing work, in part to keep Syrian history and culture alive, he said. “The culture now, in Syria, I think it’s disappearing … Maybe we will lose our culture,” he said. Syrian art can also help correct the misconceptions that dominate many conversations about Syrian refugees in the U.S., Albarzawi said. “They have to know, we are normal people, we are human, just like all humans,” he said. “We are Muslims, and we are not terrorists.”

The film won the Special Jury Prize at the Toronto Urban Film Festival this year, and the two are already working on their next film, Presley said. “As a Syrian artist, I think it’s important to show what’s going on in Syria now, to reflect the reality,” Presley said. “Because Syrians are the only ones who know what’s really going on. They feel it in every step.”

22:48 - By Unknown 0

WHOLE IN THE WALL, BY HALED JARRAR

Inspired by everyday events and experiences, Jarrar’s practice incorporates performance, video, photography and sculpture to document his observations on life in an occupied Palestine. The restrictions imposed on him and his fellow citizens have become the catalyst and subject of his occasionally satirical artistic output.

One of the highlights of the exhibition is an installation which will see Jarrar construct an imposing concrete wall extending along the length of the gallery; confronting the viewer immediately upon entering the space. In order to pass through the wall visitors will have to clamber through a hole shaped like Palestine - an allegory for the process endured by people crossing the apartheid wall in the West Bank in order to reach their homes in Palestine.

Alongside this installation, Jarrar will show a series of video works and new and recent concrete sculptures based on sporting paraphernalia: footballs, volleyballs, basketballs and ping pong rackets. These are formed from materials secretly chiseled by the artist from the separation wall. By making reference to the footballs left by the wall by children who use the area as a site for their games, and by repurposing this found material, Jarrar seeks to provoke a dialogue about possession and reclamation.

22:36 - By Unknown 0

CHINESE OFFSPRING, BY ZHANG DALI

I tried to recreate the hanging body effect. In these photos I have covered the face in a black jumper to insinuate the lack of ackknowledgement immigrant workers get. Hanging the bodys form rope reflects the lack of control we all have in our current society . According to Zhang Dali these people represent the immigrant workers in rural areas of china. To cast them in resin is a way to recognize thier existence and contribution to the chinese society. I like how he hangs the immigrant workers upside down to indicate the uncertainty of thier lives and thier powerlessness in changing thier own fates.

22:12 - By Unknown 0

EU GREEN CARD LOTTERY: THE LAGOS FILE, BY SOCIÉTÉ RÉALISTE

The Green Card can be won in a free lottery organised on the Internet by the American government. The project EU Green Card Lottery mirrors the program and suggests to Americans that they should reverse the immigration flow by demanding a green card to Europe. The moment Société Réaliste (“Realistic Society”) launched the website of the project, it was besieged by demands from Third World candidates unaware that it was a fake.

The installation at the Biennale invites visitors to take the point of view of the immigration officer who has to review myriads of identity data and portraits of candidates for the European Green Card.

As the artists explained in an interview for Provision Library, the project addresses immigration management in our ‘globalized,’ ‘cosmopolitan’ world: Whereas it is considered a primary right for citizens to choose where they want to live, as soon as it concerns a non-Western person, this right vanishes.

20:04 - By Unknown 0

AN EYE FOR AN EYE, BY ARTUR ZMIJEWSKI

Oko za oko (An Eye for an Eye) consists of a set of three large-format color photographs and a video. The photographs and video depict naked men with amputated limbs, accompanied by able-bodied people, who in the staged photographs and in the film "lend" their limbs to the amputated as they stroll, climb stairs or bathe. The naked bodies of the protagonists were assembled by the artist in complex compositions creating bodily hybrids: two-headed men, men with two pairs of arms etc., and at the same time the appearance of new able-bodied organisms in which the “healthy” supply the amputated with substitute limbs. The title of Zmijewski's work recalls the antique rule of dispensing justice, but the artist is not concerned with the question of revenge but with that of possibilities.

19:49 - By Unknown 0

REFUSING EXCLUSION, BY DELAINE LE BAS

As a Romani, my viewpoint has always been that of the outsider, and this position of the 'other' is reflected in the materials and messages within my work. We live in a culture of mixed values and garbled messages. My works are crafted from the disregarded and disparate objects of the car boot sale and the charity shop. A bricollage of materials. Employing the materials of the everyday, all formed together in a manner that allows them to be precious yet reclaimed.

19:43 - By Unknown 1

A SECRET MEMORIAL FOR CIVILIAN CASUALTIES, BY MATT KENYON

Artist Matt Kenyon wants you to write a letter to the US government—and he’s even supplying the paper.

Under a magnifying loupe, the ruled lines in his ordinary-looking legal pads reveal the names and details of every Iraqi civilian killed during the first three years of the US-led invasion of Iraq, starting in 2003. To produce the pads, Kenyon used micro-printing, a special process typically used as anti-counterfeiting technique for banknotes.

The project is a memorial to the war’s casualties, similar to Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC—only Kenyon’s in the form of a palette of yellow stationery that is currently stored in his Michigan studio. His goal is to draw attention to the thousands of Iraqis who have perished without much acknowledgement from the US government. Kenyon claims that the pads have been smuggled into the halls and supply closets of US congressmen and senators. The pads are also now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Kenyon, who is also an associate professor at the University of Michigan, isn’t just interested in archiving the pads for posterity.

“Every letter sent to the government is recorded, archived, and filed,” he explained at the TED conference in Vancouver, Canada. With every letter sent, the sheets of paper are activated, acting like Trojan horses that carry the names of the fallen into the national record.

“I started this project in 2007 but I felt that it was appropriate to present it again, given the fact that the US just reauthorized military operations in Iraq,” Kenyon tells Quartz. “For the price of postage, I’m happy to send them to anyone interested in helping spread the word.”

Watch Matt Kenyon's TED talk.

17:29 - By Unknown 0

DNA VENDING MACHINE, BY GABE BARCIA-COLOMBO

The DNA Vending Machine is an art installation by Gabe Barcia-Colombo used to raise awareness of our increasing access to biotechnology.

Watch Gabe Barcia-colombo's TED video.

16:59 - By Unknown 0

TAMMAM AZZAM

Syrian artist Tammam Azzam creates a ‘hybrid form’ of painting through the application of various media, arriving at interactions between surface and form that borrow and multiply as compositions evolve. Unconventional materials such as rope, clothespins, and other found objects are employed to create depth, texture, and space, achieving a striking balance between ordinary objects and the expanse of the picture plane despite a visible tension.

Following the start of the uprising in Syria, Azzam turned to digital media to create visual composites of the conflict that have resonated with viewers. These widely-distributed works are informed by his interest in the interventionist potential of digital photography and street art as powerful and direct forms of protest that are difficult to suppress. In early 2013, Azzam made worldwide headlines when his work Freedom Graffiti went viral on social media. Enlisting one of the most iconic works of art, Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss, to protest the country's suffering, he superimposed a recognisable image of love over the walls of war-torn Damascus. Recently, he has returned to painting with Storeys, a series of monumental works that communicate the magnitude of devastation experienced across his native country through expressionist compositions of destroyed structures. Exposing the current state of his homeland to the world, Azzam delves into a therapeutic exercise of reconstruction, storey by storey.

19:36 - By Unknown 0

BUKHARA, BY MONA HATOUM

Mona Hatoum often works with domestic objects and objects the West associate with the Arab world. Her work deals with issues of displacement and identity. She has said: “…my work is about my experience of living in the West as a person from the Third World, about being an outsider, about occupying a marginal position, being excluded, being defined as ‘Other’ or as one of ‘Them’.

'Bukhara (red)' is a Persian style carpet similar to those that furnished her childhood home. Areas of the weave have been removed from the carpet as if moth eaten or worn in some way to form the Gall-Peters equal-area projection of the world map, which rescales the continents according to their true proportions.

19:10 - By Unknown 0

BRICK SELLERS OF KABUL, BY LIDA ABDUL

Lida Abdul is an Afghan artist who works in a variety of media that attempts to understand the destruction and political unrest that has ravaged her country for the past several decades. Born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1973, Abdul was forced to flee her country in the late 1980s. She lived as a refugee in India and Germany before moving to the United States. It was not until 2001 that Abdul returned to Afghanistan, where she has since staged video-based works that explore the interconnection between architecture and identity.

19:04 - By Unknown 0

SHIRIN NESHAT

"People should be free to choose what they want to do with their lives, what they want to wear, what religion they want to believe in; this is not something a government or a community should impose" (Shirin Neshat).

Shirin Neshat's TED talk "Art in Exile".

18:09 - By Unknown 0

COLOUR ME, BY BERNI SEARLE

The series 'Colour Me' is a play on the racial classification 'coloured' under apartheid legislation, a contentious term which is heavily debated in post-apartheid politics, particularly in the Western Cape. In the work, I chose to cover myself with various colors - red, yellow, white, brown, in an attempt to resist any definition of identity which is static, or can be placed into neat categories. Placing myself or my body in the work, exposes other aspects of my identity, for example, gender. Exposing myself therefore involves a process of claiming and points to the idea that there are a range of axis that inform identity which are inter-connected, determining relationships of dependency and domination in any given context.
Berni Searle's website

17:51 - By Unknown 3

THE DEATH OF MARAT, BY HE XIANGYU

Chinese artist He Xiangyu created a life-size fiberglass sculpture of dissident artist Ai Wei Wei’s corpse lying contorted face down on the ground. The title of the work ‘The Death of Marat’ refers to the 18th century portrait by Jaques-Louis David of the French revolutionary leader murdered in his bath. In a similar vein, His work reflects the political persecution of progressive thinkers and artists who have been silenced and imprisoned; hence, the choice to use Ai, most well-known for his openly critical stance against the Chinese government. Ai has become a symbol of the struggle for human rights in China. When the work was displayed in a small German town, the incredibly life-like sculpture caused panic as passers-by mistook the artwork for an actual corpse.

Article appeared on Art Republik.

18:45 - By Unknown 0

ZERO

In a world that judges people by their number, Zero faces constant prejudice and persecution. He walks a lonely path until a chance encounter changes his life forever: he meets a female zero. Together they prove that through determination, courage, and love, nothing can be truly something.

11:40 - By Unknown 0

TO REMEMBER US BETTER, BY JESSICA LAGUNAS

A group of artists from Guatemala organized this exhibition against the violence of women in Guatemala. It opened on the International Women’s Day, March 8th 2005 in the cultural district Cuatro Grados Norte.

The five pairs of hanging shoes represent and honor the 527 murdered women in Guatemala during 2004. As a point of reference, in 2001 there were 303 women murdered in the country. It was installed on the balcony of the façade of the Centro Cultural de España.

12:24 - By Unknown 0

IN MEMORIAM, BY JESSICA LAGUNAS

Due to the recent escalation of violence and murder of women in Guatemala, this project is to honor all the women who have been murdered there in recent years. The installation consists of a wooden jewelry box made in Guatemala containing 572 bullet shells, the number of women murdered in Guatemala during 2006.

According to Amnesty International “Over 2,200 women and girls have been brutally murdered in Guatemala since 2001. Up to 665 cases were registered in 2005; 527 in 2004; 383 in 2003 and 163 in 2002. 299 killings of women have been reported between January and May 2006 alone”.

12:18 - By Unknown 0

50 HUMAN RIGHTS CASES

A journey through 50 extraordinary human rights cases that transformed all of our lives. Access on a desktop computer for full experience and click the story links to read a bitesize summary of each case.

Take a look!

http://rightsinfo.org/infographics/fifty-human-rights-cases/

21:09 - By Unknown 0