Qiu Zhijie, Lara Favaretto, Nira Pereg

Talbot Rice Gallery announces three exhibitions to open on October 29, 2022: Qiu Zhijie (Beijing), Lara Favaretto (Turin) and Nira Pereg (Tel Aviv).

In his first solo exhibition in the UK, Qiu Zhijie occupies the whole of Talbot Rice Gallery’s historic Georgian Gallery with new series of ink-paintings and an atmospheric installation evoking an archaeological dig. Embracing calligraphy, poetry, teaching, criticism, cartography and curating, Qiu has earned worldwide critical recognition for his concept and practice of “total art.” New series of works are being produced at a time of a rapidly developing, fractious geopolitical landscape, and a return to chilling relations between centres of power. Against this backdrop, Qiu’s sprawling maps, surreal linguistic play and philosophical provocations, represent an entangled, complicated and contradictory world that for all its diversity, is also inseparably co-dependent.

Following presentations at MoMA PS1 (2012), MOCA, Cleveland (2017), Kunsthalle Mainz (2018) and The Bass, Miami Beach (2019), Lara Favaretto will show Momentary Monument—The Library, 2012–2022, for the first time in the UK: a monolithic oversized bookcase displaying 2,488 unwanted books containing a folded image from the artist’s archive. As visitors are invited to take away a book of their choosing, they will effectively dismantle the “monument” whilst giving the discarded books a second life. Over the course of the exhibition, Talbot Rice Gallery will also stage a “clandestine talk”—as part of Favaretto’s ongoing project Thinking Head (thinking-head.net). Taking place in an underground space within the University of Edinburgh’s estate, academics and commentators from across a variety of disciplines will be invited to enter into a dialogue around one of the artists keywords, “borders.”

Nira Pereg’s multi-channel video installations are anchored in a documentary practice that both reveals and questions conflicting behavioural protocols. The Patriachs Trilogy (2012–2022) is filmed in Al-Khalil/Hebron, Occupied Palestinian Territories, and follows the biblical motif of intergenerational “birthright” as it is embodied by the pilgrimage site Cave of the Patriarchs. This revered place functions as both a mosque and synagogue shared by Jewish and Muslim practitioners through a complicated arrangement. Pereg emphasises the performative qualities of routine activities in the cave that touch upon the link between ceremony and territory, bringing forth a reality that is far from the general public’s awareness and revealing the complex way in which systems pertaining to religious belief, social norms and politics intertwine.

Talbot Rice Gallery’s exhibition programme is supported by Edinburgh College of Art and Creative Scotland. Qiu Zhijie’s exhibition is also supported by The Confucius Institute for Scotland and Galleria Continua.

Forthcoming at Talbot Rice Gallery 

The Accursed Share
March 17–May 27, 2023
Marwa Arsanios, Sammy Baloji, Cian Dayrit, Moyra Davey, Hanna von Goeler, Goldin+Senneby, Lubaina Himid, Hana Miletić and Terra0
At a time of spiralling global debts and escalating living costs, The Accursed Share is a group exhibition about debt that seeks to reclaim the idea from the abstraction of economics and put people, places and communities at the heart of conversations about what we really owe one another.

Stay in touch with us as we explore what the 16th-century University of Edinburgh, together with Edinburgh College of Art, can contribute to contemporary art research and production today and in the future.

Press contact: Melissa MacRobert, melissa.macrobert@ed.ac.uk