What people have in common is the assumptions about others as seen from a personal point of view. Who owns the Truth? Do several truths exist?
The exhibition ”Antagelser/ Assumptions” consists of one Norwegian and three foreign artists who each shed light on our conceptions of “The Others.”
Soody Sharifi (Iran), Jone Skjensvold (Norway), Kwestan Jamal Bawan (North Iraq/ Kurdistan) and Doris Salcedo (Colombia). Soody Sharifi frequently travels from USA to Tehran in order to photograph the the country she left behind in 1974. She displays people in modern Iran, and what we recognize across cultures: love, the hubris of youth, the fascination and testing of popular culture. In ”Maxiatyrer” she conveys the Iranian everyday life as a photo collage inserted in a traditional cultural context, with Persian miniatures as a source of inspiration. A video conveys a stark contrast to how the government wish to convey the public image of Tehran, and how life is lived in private. Soody Sharifi uses this method to challenge interpersonal simplification.
Jone Skjensvold (VLF*) uses classic Persian design, and his exhibition includes a digitally designed carpet produced as a table. Whilst undertaking a project in Iran, he studied classic patterns but was encouraged to bring his own personal variations into these, as per local tradition. The rest of the exhibition relates to Western views on Iran’s nuclear program and the title “Atoms for Peace” refers to a U.S. nuclear power program from the 1950s. In a series of large carved shapes, Skjensvold juxtaposes the symbols for radioactivity from 1946 and the Nuclear Disarmament Movement from 1958. These symbols further combine and interact with traditional Persian ornamentation in a series of hand coloured screen prints.
Curator: Grethe Hald
(*Vincent Lunge Foundation is the artist’s cultural exchange project, founded in 1999 and active in several countries)
Kwestan Jamal Bawan came to Norway in 1998 as a Kurdish UN refugee from Northern Iraq. “Antagelser / Assumptions” presents two large scale acrylic landscape paintings which show the contrasting perspectives of these two worlds. They deal with the different views on place and landscape, and the space in-between: the journey in an extended sense. She originates from a mountainous area north of present-day Iraq, where war and the need for escape is a constant reality and people focus more on insecurity, distance and fear than the rare sensory experiences of nature. When Kwestan arrived in Hardanger and later settled in Bergen, she experienced a new landscape filled with harmony. Her visual reflections refer to both artistic traditions and social implications. Since
Doris Salcedo participated in an exhibition at Galleri F 15 in 2000, she has become one of the worlds most renowned artists. “Antagelser/Assumptions” presents four inkjets from her biggest project so far: ”Shibboleth” from The Tate Modern 2007. A deep crack chiselled in the floor in The Turbine Hall became a concrete image of the situation to the world’s marginalized, its’ outcasts and those forcibly moved. Doris Salcedo has stated:”I know that I cannot save anybody´s life, but art can keep ideas alive, ideas that can influence directly our everyday lives, our daily experiences”.
