Alfredo Jaar
22 Women
September 3–November 1, 2015
Stiftelsen 3,14 International Contemporary Art Foundation
Vaagsallmenningen 12
5014 Bergen
Norway
Hours: Tuesday–Friday 11am–5pm,
Saturday–Sunday noon–4pm
Free entrance
www.stiftelsen314.com
www.alfredojaar.net
Stiftelsen 3,14 is honored to present Alfredo Jaar’s project 22 Women in Bergen, in collaboration with SKMU Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand, Norway.
Chilean-born, New York-based artist, architect, and filmmaker Alfredo Jaar’s ongoing project 22 Women is a further development of his examination of images and their mediating and supportive structures that in turn form our sensibilities.
The project is an expansion of Three Women (2010), an installation in which miniature photographic portraits of three women—Graça Machel (Mozambique), Ela Bhatt (India), and Aung San Suu Kyi (Burma)—are brightly illuminated with an assembly of tripod-mounted, fluorescent spotlights placed in near proximity to each image. 22 Women presents more activists from around the world who are relatively unseen by the powerful amplification of the mass media. Jaar’s installation is not solely a research project into women leading specific social causes—putting them into the spotlight—but also gestures towards that very spotlight as a key factor in the dynamics of our attention and the invisible hand “manufacturing consent.” Typical of Jaar’s work, 22 Women presents a difficult tension in which the mediating structures of art and the media rub shoulders, giving no easy answers and instead present a constellation of elements that are both celebratory and contradictory.
22 Women is a work in progress, as the artist’s goal is to expand the project to incorporate 100 extraordinary and outstanding women onto whom he will shed a bright light. The installation at 3,14 includes Amira Hass (Israel/Palestine), Bertha Oliva (Honduras), Camila Vallejo (Chile), Hawa Abdi (Somalia), Jenni Williams (Zimbabwe), Kalpona Akhter (Bangladesh), Lina Ben Mhenni (Tunisia), Lydia Cacho (Mexico), Mahnaz Mohammadi (Iran), Malalai Joya (Afghanistan), Mathilde Muhindo (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Nawal El Saadawi (Egypt), Ni Yulan (China), Olayinka Koso-Thomas (Nigeria/Sierra Leone), Razan Zaitouneh (Syria), Sandra Gomes Melo (Brazil), Susan Burton (United States), Svetlana Gannushkina (Russia), Ta Phong Tan (Vietnam), Tetyana Chornovol (Ukraine), Vandana Shiva (India), and Zainab Alkhawaja (Bahrain).
Alfredo Jaar’s work has been presented worldwide. He has participated in the Venice Biennale (1986, 2007, 2009, 2013) and Sao Paulo Biennale (1987, 1989, 2010), as well as in Documenta (1987, 2002). He has had major exhibitions at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Whitechapel, London; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, to name but a few. A major retrospective of Jaar’s work took place in three institutions across Berlin in 2012 (Berlinische Galerie, Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst e.V., and Alte Nationalgalerie), and in 2014, the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, hosted the most extensive retrospective of his career to date. 22 Women was previously shown at Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand, in 2014–15. Special thanks to curator Else-Brit Kroneberg.
On September 3, 2015, Vandana Shiva joined Alfredo Jaar in a conversation relating to her work and presence in the exhibition. In September 2014, Amira Hass was likewise present during the opening and first installation of the exhibition at Sørlandets Kunstmuseum.
On September 4, the artist gave a lecture at Bergen Academy of Art & Design, KHiB, for The UNREST SERIES, a lecture series investigating the flux between art and politics. The series was initiated by Professors Brandon LaBelle and Frans Jacobi at Bergen Academy of Art & Design, KHiB.
22 Women will be on view at Stiftelsen 3,14 until November 1, 2015.
