Presenting new commissions by UK artists
As part of the UK/UAE 2017 Year of Creative Collaboration, the Sharjah Art Foundation will present new commissions by artists from and based in the UK at the Sharjah Biennial 13, Tamawuj.
Curated by Christine Tohme, Sharjah Biennial 13 will be on view from 10 March-12 June 2017.
Supported by the British Council, new commissions by Walid Siti, Oscar Murillo, Lawrence Abu Hamdan and The Otolith Group will be exhibited.
Walid Siti
Walid Siti was born in 1954 in Duhok in Iraqi-Kurdistan. After graduating from the Institute of Fine arts in Baghdad, Siti left Iraq to continue his arts education in Ljubljana, Slovenia, before seeking political asylum in the UK in 1984 where he now lives and works.
Formerly trained in printmaking, Siti works extensively in a variety of mediums including paper and painting, installation and 3D works.
His work traverses a complex terrain of memory and loss, while at the same time offering an acute insight into his world, a place of constant change. The narrative of Siti’s experience is one he shares with many exiles - of a life lived far from but still deeply emotionally connected to one’s place of birth. He takes inspiration from the cultural heritage of his native land that is crisscrossed with militarized borders and waves of migration.
In his art, Siti shows these forces at work, demonstrating their effects with delicacy, wit and an underlying sadness. His own sense of a lost history merges with the concern that his country’s rush to “reconstruct” may be undermining what had seemed to be unshakeable foundations of human values.
Oscar Murillo
Oscar Murillo's large-scale paintings imply action, performance and chaos, but are in fact methodically composed of rough-hewn, stitched canvases that often incorporate fragments of text as well as studio debris such as dirt and dust.
His paintings, video works, and performances are tied to a notion of community, stemming from the artist's cross-cultural ties to Colombia, where he was born in 1986, and the diverse places in which he travels and works.
Murillo earned his B.F.A. in 2007 from the University of Westminster, London, followed by his M.F.A. in 2012 from the Royal College of Art, London. He joined the contempory art gallery David Zwirner in 2013 and had his inaugural exhibition, A Mercantile Novel, at the gallery in New York the following year. binary function marked his first solo presentation at David Zwirner in London in 2015.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Lawrence Abu Hamdan is an artist, 'private ear' and fellow at the Vera List Centre for Art and Politics at the New School, New York.
His projects have taken the form of audiovisual installations, performances, graphic works, photography, Islamic sermons, cassette tape compositions, potato chip packets, essays, and lectures.
Abu Hamdan’s interest with sound and its intersection with politics originate from his background in DIY music. He has made sonic analyses for legal investigations at the UK Asylum Tribunal and advocacy for organisations such as Amnesty International.The artist’s forensic audio investigations are conducted as part of his research for Forensic Architecture at Goldsmiths College London where he is also a PhD candidate.
The Otolith Group
The Otolith Group was founded in 2002 and consists of Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun who live and work in London.
During their long-standing collaboration, the Group have drawn from a wide range of resources and materials. They explore the moving image, the archive, the sonic and the aural within the gallery context.
The work is research based and in particular has focused on the essay film, that seeks to look at conditions, events and histories in their most expanded form.
The Group have exhibited, installed and screened their works nationally and internationally by a wide range of museums, public and private galleries, biennials, foundations and other bodies.