Jumana Manna: A magical substance flows into me
January 30–May 1, 2016
Heimo Zobernig
wood painting
The Vienna-based artist Heimo Zobernig (b.1958, Mauthen; Austria) has achieved wide recognition for his sculptures, paintings, videos and performances. With works that respond to the legacy of the discourses and themes of formalist, abstract and Minimalist art, he is an important representative of the artists associated with “Kontext Kunst” (Context Art) in the German-speaking art scene of the 1990s. His practice is defined by a calculated balance that playfully calls into question form and function, as well as the presentation and staging of art.
For his first solo presentation in the Nordic countries, a series of new sculptures reflects on the iconic architecture of the gallery space, unpacking its role as a neutral container for art. The artist has incorporated the temporary partition walls built to display works in the preceding exhibition, Joan Jonas’s Light Time Tales, which have been left unaltered in their original positions. This enables them to gain significance as sculptures that bear an ambivalent resemblance to plinths and stage props, subtly questioning what an artwork is.
In collaboration with the independent curator and editor Moritz Küng, Malmö Konsthall and the artist are producing the catalogue raisonné Books & Posters, which will be released during the exhibition’s run. Presenting and contextualising over 200 artist’s books, monographs, exhibition catalogues and posters, the publication will offer an original and comprehensive overview of the ways in which Zobernig has engaged with an expanded notion of publishing as a way to explore the linguistic aspects of art.
Curator: Diana Baldon
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Jumana Manna
A magical substance flows into me
C-salen
The Berlin- and Jerusalem-based artist Jumana Manna (b. 1987) creates films, installations, and sculptures that explore how power is articulated through relationships, with a focus on the body and materiality in relation to historical narratives and nationalism.
The centerpiece of her exhibition is the feature-length film, A magical substance flows into me (2015), which draws on the radio program Oriental Music, made in 1936–37 for the Palestine Broadcasting Service by the German-Jewish ethnomusicologist Robert Lachmann. To realise her film, Manna travelled across Palestine/Israel to meet the groups Lachmann had studied, playing his recordings and making new ones of her own. Her exchanges with Kurdish, Moroccan, and Yemenite Jews, Samaritans, members of urban and rural Palestinian communities, Bedouins, and Coptic Christians in their homes and places of work and worship are interspersed with scenes of her parents in her family home in East Jerusalem, entangling the artist in the complex history of her hometown. The film attempts to disassemble false binaries and challenge the logic of partition and segregation, as well as the colonial discourses underpinning them. Manna seeks, instead, to address the question of Palestine through the lens of 1948 and its consequences, while calling for a multifaceted Palestine, reimagined through the possibilities of sound and listening.
A new, site-specific installation consisting of a series of small-scale sculptures is perched on a stage-like construction. These objects evoke vases, bodily fragments or archaeological findings and resonate with the musical performances in the film. As Manna stated in a recent interview: “This idea of the body as a medium and as a place of resonance has been something that has followed me throughout the making of these works. The sculptures are vessels, similar to our bodies, that may be filled with fluids, air or sound; sound is taking place in space but is also spreading within us.”
The film A magical substance flows into me is co-commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation and Chisenhale Gallery, with Malmö Konsthall and the 2016 Biennale of Sydney.
Curator: Diana Baldon
More information about the exhibition
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