Marwa Arsanios Read Bio Collapse
Marwa Arsanios is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher who reconsiders the politics of the mid-twentieth century from a contemporary perspective, with a particular focus on gender relations, urbanism, and industrialization. She approaches research collaboratively and seeks to work across disciplines. She is cofounder of 98weeks Research Project, and is currently a PhD candidate at the Akademie der bildenden Kunst in Vienna.
Arsanios has had solo exhibitions at Skuc gallery in Lujubljana (2018); Beirut Art Center (2017); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016); Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2016); Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2015) and Art in General, New York (2015). Her work has also been shown in a number of group exhibitions, including recently at Warsaw Biennial (2019), Sharjah Biennial (2019), Gwangju Biennial (2018), and Lulea biennial (2018) among others. Her videos have been screened at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2011, 2017); Berlin International Film Festival (2010, 2015), Copenhagen dox (2018) and e-flux storefront, New York (2009). She was awarded the Georges de Beauregard award at FID Marseille (2019), and the Special Prize of the Pinchuk Future Generation Art Prize (2012).
Double screening and discussion: Marwa Arsanios and Nele Wohlatz
Social Studies
Films by Maher Abi Samra, Marwa Arsanios, and Jumana Manna
# 125
In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein describes how when a crisis happens, companies infiltrate society, and the government imposes new rules or cuts. It’s sometimes more possible in the art sector to see individuals, groups, and collectives using these moments to infiltrate the structure that is in crisis or that claims the crisis.
# 111
Contemporary art is not the production of the institution, but is rather the institution itself. The relationship between the structure of production and the product is very entangled. They both function on the same economic basis: proposal writing. It is a framework of thinking and an act of language that is always happening in the future tense: “The project aims to …,” “The work will …,” etc. Writing the proposal becomes part of the artwork itself. The person who knows how to explain the proposed piece, mainly in English, will be more likely to get grants. This process relies on the artist’s embeddedness in spaces that hold cultural capital, and not only on the artist’s or the work’s merit. The claim of equality in open calls for funded projects is contested.
