Page 35 - 50.La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

ARSENALE

‘non-citizens’. multiplicity of viewpoints becomes possible at one and the same time.
The intimate relationship between past and present is the subject of The possibility of reconciling different worldviews underpins the
Salem Mekuria’s beautiful film installation that evokes the periodic photographs of Rotimi Fani-Kayode who creates a photographic world
breaks in continuity and stability - the eruption of conflict, war, famine in which ‘the body is the focal point for an exploration of the relationship
and exodus - in Ethiopia’s recent history and the co-existence of past, between erotic fantasy and ancestral spiritual values’. Just as Fani-Kayode
present and future in the daily lives of Ethiopians. Resonant of recent challenges the codes of photographic convention by moving away from
events that have taken place in Kosovo and Rwanda, Zarina Bhimji’s the idea of an objective, material reality, Clifford Charles’ drawings
haunting images of an evacuated Ugandan landscape are concerned with represent a move away from the sentimental and melancholic images
the physical traces of migration and exile, of elimination and erasure as of post-apartheid South Africa. These compelling abstract ink drawings
it is engraved upon the physical landscape of contemporary Africa. As chart a new visual and physical space in the post-apartheid era; their
Bhimji describes them, the images are about ‘listening to difference... dark, inky surfaces creating a multilayered blackness that spills over the
listening to changes in tone, difference of color’. Defying the political white surface of the paper. Political and social violence is a recurrent
violence that has riven Algeria from the colonial struggle to present-day theme. Laylah Ali’s cartoon-like gouache paintings are deeply disturbing
conflicts, Samta Benyahia’s architectural installation (a tribute to the and ambiguous narratives that suggest repeated episodes of violence
great Algerian writer Kateb Yacine) creates a utopian space in which and conflict, underpinned by the dynamics of race and power. Inspired
the past and present are no longer in conflict with one another; here a by the graphic style of comic strips, Ali constructs a world in which the

Dryden Goodwin

Above/Below 1
Stills from Above/Below, 2003
2 screen video installation with soundtrack) courtesy the
artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery

Hakan Gursoytrak
Havaalani - Airport
1993

WORLD of ART 35