14–17 June 2012
Green Art Gallery Dubai
at Art 43 Basel
Art Statements, Hall 1, Booth S2
Green Art Gallery
Al Quoz 1, Street 8, AlSerkal Avenue, Unit 28
PO Box 257 11 Dubai, UAE
T + 9714 346 9305
info [at] gagallery.com
www.gagallery.com
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Green Art Gallery Dubai announces its participation in the Art Statements sector at Art 43 Basel with interdisciplinary artist Shadi Habib Allah’s multimedia installation entitled S/N: 8F1GNA0021.
Shadi Habib Allah’s project for Art Statements is an interplay between the sculptural element and its transformation from the black-market. The accompanying video documents the process of the artist ‘commissioning’ a camera to be stolen in the clandestine marketplace and the labor of fashioning a new ‘legal’ identity on the object.
The work represents illicit economies that exist within established forms of circulation and deal with illegal bodies—be they stolen goods or undocumented immigrants. This shadow system of exchange operates under the radar of authority but has an effect on the economy as a whole, and also performs an essential service of making ‘legitimate’ objects and people. The assigned form to these bodies constructs a new meaning, and gives them the ability to move legally, a transfiguration that resonates with artistic practice itself.
The process of acquiring the camera renders visible the mechanisms of the illicit economy—from ordering to delivery—taking place both in public and domestic spaces the sites of trafficking are revealed in their everyday-ness. In the final operation, the camera records the dismantling of its shell—similar to the erasure of traces on a stolen car—aiming to conceal its previous history, and undergoes a stripping off and modification of its body. The workers of the auto body shop, implicated in this action as agents of concealment, have their presence partially distorted as the dismantling process progresses and their words are subtly chopped. The transformation of the camera’s identity thrusts the object into a state of transience—the past resides internally while the surface takes on a new visage in an attempt to forge a future.
Born in Jerusalem in 1977, Shadi Habib Allah received a BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University. His interdisciplinary practice, primarily involving sculpture and video, is informed by ideas on structural and material degeneration. He was twice awarded 2nd Prize for the Young Artist Award from the A.M. Qattan Foundation, and has attended residencies at Cittadelarte-Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella, Italy and Gasworks in London, England. He has participated in exhibitions at the Riwaq Biennale, Ramallah; Tate Modern, London; and Palestine c/o Venice at the Venice Biennale. He was recently selected as a recipient of the 2011 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award.
Green Art Gallery is a contemporary art gallery based in Dubai, UAE. Central to the gallery’s curatorial program are contemporary artists from the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey, and beyond, working across different media, traditional and new, who employ a research-based approach. Artists represented include Shadi Habib Allah, Kamrooz Aram, Seher Shah, and Hale Tenger, among others.
For more information on Shadi Habib Allah please visit www.gagallery.com/artists/shadi-habib-allah.