Oreet Ashery
Party for Freedom
September 7–October 27, 2013
OvergadenInstitute of ContemporaryArt
Overgaden neden Vandet 17
DK-1414 København K
In her first solo exhibition in Denmark, Oreet Ashery explores the potentials and dilemmas of liberation in a culture at odds with itself. The exhibition Party for Freedom takes its title from the Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilder’s neo-liberal freedom party Partij voor de Vrijheid, known for its anti-immigration views.
A three-screen video projection forms a tableau of ten audio-visual sequences with a specially commissioned soundtrack ranging from contemporary classical music to jazz fusion and punk. Creating a sensory universe imbedded in trash aesthetics that combines a film essay with performative scenarios, the work explores freedom as a deeply conflicted and contradictory entity. Ashery responds to the freedom rhetoric of the far right by turning its deeply seated and unconscious sentiments inside out. Ambiguity lurks in the wings of Ashery’s universe; the historical baggage of the left-wing and ethos of the avant-garde are also reflected upon via whitish nakedness, unresolved revolutions and indigenous appropriations of spirituality.
Especially for her show at Overgaden, Ashery has created a participatory installation piece titled The Space for Freedom is Getting Smaller and Less Transparent. Visitors to Overgaden are invited to enter a built structure and paint its transparent plastic walls. As the walls get covered in paint, the outside world becomes obscured. Every other week, an additional transparent structure will be constructed within the previous one.
Party for Freedom takes the form of events, performances and exhibitions in a wide range of locations in different countries both within and beyond the art world. In connection with the exhibition, Overgaden has republished and translated the essay The Unfinished Revolution: Oreet Ashery’s Party for Freedom by the art historian TJ Demos.
Artists performers in video: Andro Andrex, Kim Bumstead, Miles Coote, Alex Der Matis, Soren Evinson, Elizabeth B. Harris, Edd Hobbs, Lucy Huston, Tim Owen Jones, Andrew Kerton, Lynn Lu, Alice MacKenzie, Phoebe Osborne, Owen G Parry, Vanda Playford, Irene Revell Voiceover: Nick Ellsworth Music: Timo-Juhani Kyllönen, Woolf, Morgan Quaintance, Chyskyyrai Camera: Oreet Ashery, Anna Matos, Vanda Playford Editor: Guillem Serrano Visual FX: Daria Fissoun Sound Mixing: Alfredo Paz
Riso prints: LemonMelon Printing
Supported by Artangel (commission), Art Council England, Kone Foundation, Performance Matters (a collaboration between Goldsmiths University of London, University of Roehampton, and the Live Art Development Agency, financially assisted by the Arts & Humanities Research Council)
Special event:
Talk: Oreet Ashery, Omar Kholeif & Mathias Danbolt
Saturday 26 October, 15–16.30h
In connection with Oreet Ashery’s current exhibition Party For Freedom Overgaden has invited curator, writer and editor Omar Kholeif and art and queer critic Mathias Danbolt, who will discuss how the project troubles and disturbs discourses of Danish exceptionalism in terms of freedom, equality, tolerance and colorblindness and more general notions of a social imaginary, opening up a critique about binary opposition in the context of art and political representations.
For more information contact Anne Riber: T +45 3257 7273 / ar [at] overgaden.org
