kurz / dust / ghobar
4 September–15 November 2015
Opening: 4 September, 6pm
Opening concert: Praed
Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle
2 Jazdów Street
00-467 Warsaw
Poland
Artists:
Mona Aghababee, Nazgol Ansarinia, Caline Aoun, Mehraneh Atashi, Vartan Avakian, Naser Bakhshi, Charbel-joseph H.Boutros, Ali Cherri, Vikram Divecha, Negar Farajiani, Barbad Golshiri, Nicolas Grospierre, Mireille Kassar, Ali Kazim, Komuna// Warszawa, Mehreen Murtaza, Jurgen Ots, Monira Al Qadiri, Wojtek Pustoła, Neda Razavipour, Lorde Selys, Iza Tarasewicz
Curator: Anna Ptak
Co-Curator: Amanda Abi Khalil
Exhibition Design: Krzysztof Skoczylas
Graphic Design: Magdalena Burdzyńska
“Each particle of dust carries with it a unique vision of matter, movement, collectivity, interaction, affect, differentiation, composition and infinite darkness.”
–Reza Negarestani, Cyclonopedia
kurz / dust / ghobar is an international exhibition including artists whose works enter into interaction with their surrounding environment. The way in which dust behaves in geographically dispersed situations (in Beirut, Tehran, Lahore, Kuwait or Warsaw) allows us to examine the value of the material and immaterial, visible and invisible.
Dust is ubiquitous, it is everywhere and can become everything, as the sands of the desert or the dust-clogged air of the cities. This sense resonates most in the Arabic and Persian word for dust, ghobar. The Polish word kurz makes one think of the everlasting work of eliminating dust and its constant recreation. The English word dust, on the other hand, reflects a small particle on the verge of visibility, a mental bit and non-material entity. Could dust become the substance for a universal language?
Certainly, dust could serve as a guide to the exhibition. In this minutest of things, we can see a driving force that reveals new relations, geographies and states of matter. In 2013, Issa Kalantari, former Minister of Agriculture of the Islamic Republic of Iran proclaimed that the threat to life associated with air pollution or desertification is greater than that posed by the military aggression of Israel or the United States. Dust is more of a process than a thing—the one that is transforming the Himalayas into the Gobi Desert.
Dust is easily overlooked. However acknowledging it in politics, technology or art restores the balance between an event and its surroundings. The works presented at this exhibition create an environment shaped both by the artists’ conceptions and material elements. They invite us to view contemporary artistic practices through the prism of collectives engaging in communication, art and media. From representations of political and ecological issues they will lead to the relations between people, things and organisms. Their physical form questions the tension between (ethical or political) order and chaos.
Artists, writers and activists operate on matter whose status is fundamentally unclear. We have built the architecture of this exhibition from diverse remnants of art works, earlier exhibitions and sets. These dark and complex elements, which merge with the artists’ works, create a space that allows the viewer to perceive that there is something in dust—the matter of the art world (with its storages, circuits and servers accumulating terabytes of documentation)—both murky and clear.
kurz / dust / ghobar is an undertaking comprising an exhibition, a series of site-specific commissions, artist residencies, an archive-auditorium and also a series of performances, discussions and film screenings. This organic structure is intended to initiate reflection and the experiencing of everyday coexistence with matter in different geopolitical contexts. This structure leads us beyond Warsaw, linking us to the urban milieus of Tehran or Beirut.
There is a risk that engaging with matter could not onlylead us into, but also beyond art.
Coordination: Patrycja Rómmel
Cooperation: Aleksandra Knychalska
Press contact: Agnieszka Dąbrowska
a.dabrowska [at] csw.art.pl / T +48 (0)22 628 12 71 / M +48 506 035 370
Please check our website regularly for schedules of talks and workshops and updates.
This exhibition was initiated as part of Re-Directing: East, a project run by the A-I-R Laboratory, a residency program at CCA Ujazdowski Castle.
