Hiwa K & Ars Viva 2018: Anna-Sophie Berger, Oscar Enberg, Zac Langdon-Pole

Hiwa K: Moon Calendar

S.M.A.K. is hosting a solo exhibition focused on videos, performances and installations from the last ten years by Hiwa K (1975, Kurdistan, Iraq), a German-Kurdish artist, who employs his body, identity, music and play as components for a vernacular artistic language. Childhood memories, local traditions, anecdotes about his family and friends, everyday encounters with others, experiences during his flight from Kurdistan to Europe in the 1990s, current events, history, and daily politics repeatedly serve as source material for his open and process-oriented practice.

The paradox of “belonging to” and “being alienated from” is of vital importance in the work of the artist, whose hidden surname underlines his involvement in issues around the formation of identity. The metaphor of placelessness as a human condition is expressed as a sensitive balance between horizontal and vertical forces: economic and social hierarchies among people, citizens and rulers. The title Moon Calendar is not only the title of one of the works in the exhibition, but can also be seen as a culturally different but equivalent form of orientation and navigation in the world.

Hiwa K’s work over the last ten years served as raw material to be revisited, rewritten, or reedited, whereby the choreography of his most comprehensive exhibition so far strictly follows his artistic method, which is devoted to opening up historical or current events to find or conceive alternative perspectives and solutions. The works on display are: For a Few Socks of Marbles (2012), This Lemon Tastes of Apple (2011), Do You Remember What You Are Burning? (2011), The Bell Project (2007-15), Pin Down (2017), Qatees (2009), Pre-Image, Porto (2014), It’s Spring and the Weather Is Great, So Let’s Close All Object Matters (2012), View From Above (2017), One Room Apartment (2008), Diagonal (2008) and Moon Calendar (2007).

Hiwa K has participated in group shows such as Manifesta 7, Trient (2008), La Triennale, Intense Proximity, Paris (2012), the “Edgware Road Project” at the Serpentine Gallery, London (2012), the Venice Biennale (2015) and documenta14, Kassel/Athens (2017). In 2016, he received the Schering Stiftung Art Award, which included an exhibition at KW Berlin in 2017, and he also won the Arnold Bode Prize, in the context of documenta.

Following its presentation in S.M.A.K., curated by Martin Germann, Moon Calendar will be shown at Kunstverein Hannover, Germany in an altered version.

Ars Viva 2018: Anna-Sophie Berger, Oscar Enberg, Zac Langdon-Pole
Since 1953, the Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI e.V. (the Association of Arts and Culture of the German Economy Federation of German Industries) has been awarding the annual Ars Viva prize to young artists living in Germany whose works are distinguished by their progressive nature. The winners in 2017/18 are Anna-Sophie Berger (1989) from Austria, and Oscar Enberg (1988) and Zac Langdon-Pole (1988), both from New Zealand. Following the first exhibition at Kunstverein München, the three artists are showing their work in a newly established exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst - S.M.A.K. in Ghent.

The winners were selected by an international jury chaired by Ulrich Sauerwein (Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI e.V., Berlin) and made up of members of the Kulturkreis Fine Arts Committee and the directors and curators Chris Fitzpatrick (Kunstverein München), Martin Germann (S.M.A.K., Ghent), Zita Cobb (Fogo Island Arts), Nicolaus Schafhausen (Fogo Island Arts/ Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna) and Krist Gruijthuijsen (KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin).

The exhibition is a joint project by S.M.A.K. and Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI e.V., with the support of the Allianz Kulturstiftung. The works by Anna-Sophie Berger were produced in association with Phileas – A Fund for Contemporary Art and the Bundeskanzleramt in Austria.