EX ORIENTE
About This Project
In the months of September and October 2018, our gallery will guests the exhibition POST-COLONIAL FRAMES / EX ORIENTE, and, in addition, part of the space will be transformed into a performative “project room”, hosting an evocative cycle of contemporary performances.
The participant artists and performers will rewrite the space with their gestures and their actions, transforming it, from time to time, in prison, in an archive of memories, in the colonial tea room.
Photographs, paintings and video installations by Lang Ea, Kashif Shahabaz, Christian Tablazon and Clare Charnley will be showned.
Performances by Ruchi Anadkat, Dan Allon and Neja Tomšič will take place in different dates.
The theme is among the most controversial.
“Ex Oriente Luxus, Luxus, Luxuria”: from the time of classical Greek civilization, the oriental world suggests an imagery of light, luxury and luxurious sensoriality, corresponding, for the man of the West, to the domain of the exotic, to the place in which -in a more or less oniric way- every desire can find form and fulfillment.
Without encyclopedic pretensions, the performance cycle captures “oriental visions” of the complex phenomenon of colonialism, interpreted in its multiform nature by the sensitive eye of the contemporary artist (giving voice to a different narrative).
Thus, behind the silks, spices and perfumes, the colonization of people, the economic exploitation of the naval routes, the cancellation of the local identity and the appropriation of the woman’s body will be displayed, in a revision of the archetypal images of the Orient, and staging out the “B-sides” of this process of geographic and cultural appropriation.
The new vision, made up of fragmented memories, erased faces, faded landscapes and invisible prisons, strikes the viewer with its powerful elegance, outlining links between artists from the Far East (Cambodia, Pakistan, Philippines), from the Middle East (Israel), and of the Near East (Slovenia, Balkans).
The performances have limited seats, invitation is necessary to participate : (to request the invitation, contact: info@currentcorporate.com / +39 375 553 2009)
12×2 ACTIONS / 1 September, 7 pm
The performative act suggests a new interpretation of the historical phenomenon (stratified with the colonial economies) that has seen the creation of oriental imaginaries “at the service” of the European, in particular regarding the female figure.
Tea for Five illustrates the history of Chino-American and British relations through narratives of five ships connected to the opium and tea trade: the Houqua, the Lintin, the Eamont, the Sylph and the Sea Witch. It tells the story of the China dream, that resulted in conflict and colonisation, and development of capitalism. The history of the opium fleet does not only document this particular era, it also sheds light on its consequences and the understanding of the political world today.
