Canan Senol
'I am an activist, feminist artist'
features 31.03.10 Ingrid Commandeur
Rotterdam
Witte de With
20/02/10 - 25/04/10
In the exhibition ACT V: POWER ALONE in Witte de With the Turkish artist Canan Senol shows the intriguing video-animation Exemplary. In her work she addresses the role of religious, political and patriarchal foundations that structure everyday life. Ingrid Commandeur interviewed Canan Senol in Istanbul.
Are artworks the only full time curators we know?
Baby, One More Time
Repeat Play by Saâdane Afif
18/06/08 François Piron
The artist was born in 1970, but 38 years later, he is fully occupied with looking back at his early work. This takes the form of reinterpretations in word and sound. He is famous for his largest retrospective to date, shown at the recent documenta, where mechanically driven guitars performed musical interpretations of his earlier sculptures. Several poems by artists and critics also hung on the wall, written in response to this early work. A new interpretation of his work can be admired this summer at Witte de With.
Work by the young, London painter Anj Smith (Pembury, 1979) was recently shown in the exhibition Don Quijote in Witte de With. Several small canvasses with meticulously painted scenes revealing a fantastic, strange and seductive world. Seemingly without effort, Smith transforms such timeless themes as the sublime and death into well-wrought representations that are notable for their virtuoso combination of traditional oil painting techniques and expressionistic details.
Out of the Shadows
The Cyprus Problem
01/10/04 Peter Friedl
Rotterdam
Witte de With
06/11/04 - 09/01/05
In public museums the damage that has been done over the years by nationalist ideoligies van be viewed. They reveal both the blind spots and the gynnastics that are used in attempt to cover them up.
Museums and school textbooks complement each other in the construction of retrospective mythologies on both sides of the border. They compete for the posession of historical truth by equating nation (ethnic group) with state.
The rows of glorified heros and victims follow the logic of propaganda, which blacks out everything that might change the narrative.