Wednesday, October 16, 2013

This Week in Palestine Artist of the Month: Yazan Khalili


Yazan Khalili shown in Paris at Imane Farès gallery

 [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]
    Artist of the Month
Yazan Khalili
 
Do you know who Yazan Khalili is? No? You really should meet this intelligent, talented photographer, writer, producer, and intellectual; a visual artist who uses the image as a medium for his work. He is another resounding, driven Palestinian voice who is leaving a clear mark on the artistic scene, both nationally and internationally. Young artists like Yazan are Palestine’s unplanned treasure. They are the perfect form of Palestinian resistance.  Yazan’s work is creative and every bit contemporary. Yazan received a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Birzeit University in 2003; he finished his master’s degree in 2010 at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

His photography explores the relationship between the social and spatial elements of built environment and the landscape. He tackles questions of urbanism from a visual point of view. But Yazan is also interested in the production of the image, not necessarily the final image itself; what are the political elements and processes - both global and local - that lead one particular photograph to look, feel, and read in a particular way? In his body of work Area C-The Landscape in Exile, Yazan worked with images he took while traveling through the West Bank for several years. “I was doing a reading of the images as a forensic work by trying to expose the processes that influence the production of aesthetics.” His work comprises text and photography, performing together by way of narrating the personal experience that went into taking a particular image and then discussing and analysing it.
 
In his latest exhibition at Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre, he showed his body of work Landscape of Darkness, 2010, in which he examines how darkness can reshape a highly politicised fragmented landscape. “Looking into the dark spaces, the otherwise fragmented landscape of the occupied area re-emerges with the potential of a continuous whole, thus reshaping the operational notions of space and time, light and darkness.” 
 He is a freelancer who moves between mediums in order to explore and learn more. He is one of the founding members of Zan Design Studio (2005) and works as production coordinator for films and exhibits. He has exhibited in various venues and places, including the Venice Biennial 2011 and the Sharjah Biennial 2013. He has taught a politics of production course at the International Art Academy - Palestine, and co-curated, along with Reem Shilleh, the Young Artist of the Year Award (YAYA, 2012). He also curated The City | The Image symposium with Goethe Institute, Ramallah, 2012.


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Deep into that darkness peering | محدقا في عمق تلك العتمة | Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/events/.../permalink/443080395770204/
Curated by Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center and co produced with the French ... the politics of light and darkness through two different yet akin bodies of work.

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