On the occasion of the solo show “Sunshine State,” Pirelli HangarBicocca presents a monograph dedicated to Steve McQueen, the first published in Italian, realized in close collaboration with the artist. Edited by Vicente Todolí, the catalogue of the exhibition is designed by Irma Boom, whose graphic project is enriched by a series of different papers alternating to emphasize the contents reproduced on each of them. Together with an exploration on the new video installation that gives the title to the show, which had its world premiere in Milan, the volume features a new selection of works conceived by the British artist and filmmaker in the past twenty years. Besides a wide photographic documentation of the exhibition, the volume includes in-depth entries on each work on display. Furthermore, critical contributions by art historians and curators complement the editorial project, such as a specifically commissioned essay by Cora Gilroy-Ware and an introduction on the exhibition by Vicente Todolí, together with texts by Paul Gilroy and Solveig Nelson, as well as a conversation between Hamza Walker and Steve McQueen, originally published on the catalogue Steve McQueen related to his solo show at Tate Modern in collaboration with Pirelli HangarBicocca in 2020, and translated in Italian for the first time for this occasion.

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A leading voice in Lebanon’s cultural diaspora, Rabih Mroué’s acclaimed body of work addresses the contested memory of historical events that include the Lebanese civil war, the Arab Spring, and the Syrian Revolution. Spanning theater, art, and literature, his diverse oeuvre is situated at the intersection of personal and political imaginaries, media critique, and concepts of authorship: Through scripted conversations, confessions, reports, and questions, Mroué ceaselessly interrogates ways of speaking.

Published to coincide with his major solo exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, marking his receipt of the 2020 Schering Award for Artistic Research, this anthology of interviews frames the past 20 years of Mroué’s practice. Additionally, a suite of newly commissioned interviews and an introductory essay by the curator Nadim Samman draw a portrait of the artist.

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Curator and Editorial Advisor: Amit Kumar Jain
Translation: Kadamboor Neeraj

Stranded in Najibabad (Uttar Pradesh) during the lockdown, Ahmadzai like others was uncertain about what the future held, and if she would be able to visit Kabul to be with her husband. It was during this time, confined in her barsati (terrace) studio room at her parents home that Ahmadzai delved into a practice of writing letters to her husband, revealing to him in a one-sided communication her anxieties, daily routine, loss of loved ones and their marriage.

Titled Nafas, or the Isolation Diaries, the letters include references from poetry and writings of Rabia Basri, Jalauddin Rumi Balkhi, Bedil Shanaz, Jaun Elia, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Ghalib, T.S.Elliot, Virginia Woolf, Hermann Hesse, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, each having their own impact on Ahmadzai’s life and her thought process as a contemporary artist.

These letters highlight the concerns of a woman, who is unable to come to terms with her life in flux- one with its roots in a country where religious isolation, propaganda and intolerance have become a norm, and the uncertainty of life and political instability in the other. The series, as well as an earlier series titled Lihaaf, comments on the state of the marginalized societies, such as Muslim women, where many such voices are never heard or spoken of.

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Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai’s (b. 1988) works are deeply connected to the experiences of women that rarely find a voice and are subdued under societal and political pressures or are bound within religious orthodoxies. Her works, though narrate a personal experience, are inspired by a much larger community of women who have been marginalized in history. Working within a disciplined studio practice and through collaborative community projects such as Lihaaf (Quilt), Arshi has struck a powerful chord with contemporary feminist art theory.

Her prolific art practice finds its foundation in the history of stitching by rafoogars (darners) of Najibabad. Surrounded by a large community of women who share their embroidery over songs, compassion and sisterhood, it was only natural for Arshi to turn to the fabric as her canvas. These exchanges have led to large scrolls as well as smaller works, where she juxtaposes image and text to comment on women and their roles, their sexuality, their freedom and their desires- some in love and some victims to political terrorism. An avid reader of poetry and philosophy, she not only questions patriarchy, but demands that her voice is heard and accepted.

Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai graduated with a Bachelors in Fine Art from the Aligarh Muslim University, 2011 and a Masters in Fine Art from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi in 2013. Her first solo titled Nafas (Isolation Diaries) was held at Blueprint12, New Delhi, 2021. Her group exhibitions include ‘May we meet again’, a collaborative project for Noor Riyadh light festival, Saudi National Museum, 2021; ‘Head in the Clouds’ at Chatterjee & Lal, 2021; ‘Seeds are being sown’ at Shrine Empire Gallery, 2020; The India Art Fair, 2020; ‘Out of your shadow’ by Blueprint12 at Gallery Espace, 2019 and a solo presentation at 1Shanthi Road Gallery in 2019. She is one of the recipients of the Five Million Incidents grant from the Goethe-Institut, New Delhi and the Inlaks Fine Arts Award in 2019.

She lives between Kabul and New Delhi.

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In the space where the Perú-Chile border meets the Pacific coastline, lies a triangle of approximately 3.7 hectares. Known as the “Triángulo Terrestre”, this piece of land has been causing diplomatic disputes between the two nations since the middle of the 20th century. Despite its relatively small size (equivalent to Parque Kennedy in Lima or Madison Square Park in New York) and having no agricultural, commercial or strategic value the Triángulo Terrestre has been in dispute since the signing of the 1929 treaty between Perú and Chile. The disputed land has acquired a symbolic value employed at different times by the governments of each country for political purposes.​

In April 2017, HAWAPI, in partnership with Galería Metropolitana (Chile) took a group of 13 artists (5 Peruvians, 5 Chileans, 1 Bolivian, 1 Israeli and 1 North American) to camp in Santa Rosa—the closest village to the “Triángulo Terrestre”. During four days camping on site, the group generated a series of artistic interventions and actions to contemplate in situ the social, political, economic and physical impact created by this dispute; before moving to Tacna where they staged an exhibition of their work in the independent cultural centre, Laramamango.

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The first monograph dedicated to the work of Michaël Sellam, which is at the crossroads of sculpture, photography, video and music. Here, it brings together, among other things, fruits, flowers, parallel universes, smoke, microscopic hieroglyphs, an Italian grandmother, traces of lipstick, masters of darkness, some robots, aliens, the making of Egyptian ropes, the inhalation of parasitic odors from the solar system, the intensive programming of an extremely slow machine and the 180° head turn.

«Notre civilisation se développe dans une logique de la contingence, de la possibilité pour chaque chose d’être tout autre. Comment la notion de matière s’est ouverte à une économie et à une pensée de la forme à un moment où tout devient programmable? Expérimenter à travers l’art les relations de tensions entre science, fiction, culture et capital développe, de fait, un certain artifice. Il est peut-être nécessaire de produire une nouvelle esthétique qui ne soit ni représentative, ni abstraite, ni conditionnelle, mais constitutive d’une époque où, plus qu’à toute autre, nous construisons un monde qui inclut comme possible notre disparition et ou coexistent les formes chaotiques et ordonnées de la circulation: des idées, des formes, des atomes, des énergies, des gènes, de l’information.»
–Michaël Sellam

Texts by Gérard Berréby, Benoît Durandin, Christian Gaussen, Lætitia Paviani; interview with Timothée Chaillou. Published on the occasion of Michaël Sellam’s exhibition at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Montpellier Agglomération, from January to February 2014.

The work of Michaël Sellam (born in 1975 in Paris) multiplies the references to the world of popular leisure with a particular interest in amateur practices and forms of sub and counter-culture. Belonging to a generation that has integrated the use of computers and new technologies, he relies on these technical instruments and questions, through a complex and varied approach, forms that unfold from installation to video, from sculpture to performance.

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The inaugural Toronto Biennial of Art in 2019, titled The Shoreline Dilemma, was the first edition of a two-part biennial that traced interconnected narratives around the city’s ever-changing shoreline. These connections sought to reveal strategies of resistance against industrial-colonial systems, uncover polyphonic histories sedimented around the shoreline, and open up relations between the human and more-than-human. To extend this artistic thinking and expand notions of relationality, in 2022, the second edition, titled What Water Knows, The Land Remembers, moves inland to follow tributaries and ravines, both above ground and hidden, that shape this place.

In relation to the two Biennial exhibitions, this publication Water, Kinship, Belief is a “third” site, a place where the continuities, resonances, and dissonances between Biennial editions are extended. Its pages become a means to bring together the artists, artworks, collaborators, and ideas that have together informed the exhibitions, irrespective of chronology, dispensing with categories, and part of a greater whole. Through its content and unique design, it is both a generative guide to the exhibitions and a Biennial site of its own, presenting new artistic relations that course through the book like tributaries.

Artists: AA Bronson, Abbas Akhavan, Abel Rodríguez, Adrian Blackwell, Adrian Stimson, Aki Onda, Althea Thauberger, Kite, Amy Malbeuf, Andrea Carlson, Ange Loft, Arin Rungjang, Augustas Serapinas, Aycoobo, Bárbara Wagner, Benjamin de Burca, Brian Jungen, Caecilia Tripp, Camille Turner, Caroline Monnet, Curtis Talwst Santiago, Dana Claxton, Dana Prieto, Denyse Thomasos, Eduardo Navarro, Elder Duke Redbird, Embassy of Imagination, PA System, Eric-Paul Riege, Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Ghazaleh Avarzamani, Hajra Waheed, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan, ᐃᓱᒪ / Isuma, Jae Jarrell, ᔭᓇ ᑭᒍᓯᐊ / Janet Kigusiuq, Jeffrey Gibson, ᔨᐊᓯ ᐅᓈᖅ / Jessie Oonark, Joar Nango, Judy Chicago, Jumana Manna, Kapwani Kiwanga, Laurent Grasso, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Lisa Reihana, Lisa Steele, Kim Tomczak, Lou Sheppard, Luis Jacob, Mata Aho Collective, Marguerite Humeau, Maria Thereza Alves, Moyra Davey, Nadia Belerique, ᓇᐸᓯ ᐳᑐᒍᖅ / Napachie Pootoogook, Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa, New Mineral Collective, New Red Order, Nick Sikkuark, Paul Pfeiffer, Qavavau Manumie, Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, Hesam Rahmanian, ReMatriate Collective, Shezad Dawood, Susan Schuppli, Syrus Marcus Ware, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Tsēmā Igharas, Erin Siddall, ᕕᐃᑎᕋᐊ ᒪᒍᓯᐊᓗ / Victoria Mamnguqsualuk, and Waqas Khan.

Contributions by Adrian Blackwell, Ange Loft, Camille Georgeson-Usher, Camille Turner, Candice Hopkins, Charles Stankievech, Chiedza Pasipanodya, Ilana Shamoon, Katie Lawson, Melony Ward, Patrizia Libralato, Sebastian De Line, Susannah Rosenstock, Tairone Bastien, and Yaniya Lee.

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Published for the exhibition Hunting & Collecting, Mu.ZEE, Ostend, Belgium, cur. Sammy Baloji, Philip Van den Bossche and Anouck Clissen (3 August 2014 – 21 September 2014).

Whatever can hunting wild animals in colonial Congo and the exploitation of Congolese mines in the present have in common with a collection of modern and contemporary art in a museum in the Belgian coastal city of Ostend? In 2014 Sammy Baloji initiated an ambitious research exhibition bringing together historical documents, pictures by Congolese photographer Chrispin Mvano, works of Belgian artists from the 19th and 20th century included in the collection , contributions by contemporary artists dealing with the exploitation of Congo and finally his own acrimonious collages. This book transforms the numerous layers of the exhibition into a experimental visual essay. The seemingly distant realities f art history and global economies appears as closely intermingled.

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Exhibition catalogue for the group exhibition “Ask Yo Mama” 2011 curated by Ina Wudtke at Kunstraum Niederösterreich Vienna. With texts by Ina Wudtke and Dieter Lesage, as well as an editorial by Christiane Krejs and 49 illustrations in 4-colour print. Available from Kunstraum Niederösterreich.

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Published in 2007 as a catalogue for the solo exhibition of the same name by Ina Wudtke at Studio Voltaire London, edited by Dieter Lesage. 4-colour print with 56 illustrations. Limited, signed editions available. Supported by the Berlin Senate Scholarship to London.

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Published as a catalogue for the exhibition “Das Neueste Weltgerichtstriptychon” curated by Dieter Lesage, xhibit AdbK Vienna, 2014 – edited by Ina Wudtke, Herman Asselberghs, Alice Creischer, Andreas Siekmann, Dieter Lesage and Maruša Sagadin. Numerous 4-colour illustrations.

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