Gallery West (2018)
Gallery West is an immersive and participatory work that includes performance, live documentation and a curated exhibition. The space is arranged to evoke simultaneously a contemporary art gallery and a refugee camp; visitors are invited to interact with ‘asylum speakers’ seated in tents set up among art pieces. This situation thus seeks to question the way artists/visitors look at refugees — or other vulnerable groups — and if it is possible to revert that gaze's direction. How can we question the comfortable position of the spectator, and instead of facilitating voyeurism and consumption, challenge the status quo ?
By bringing into a gallery space a real-time situation that ultimately escapes the artist’s control, Gallery West aims to reflect on the forms of agency contemporary art can offer. In the process, it attempts to reimagine the gallery space as a place of struggle where hegemony is constructed, represented and contested in real time.
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With the participation of: Arun Daniel, Beatrix Newsome, Dimitra Kreps, Elle Zahrouni, Eve Atkinson, Heronimo Sehmi, Huw John Sam, Mamad Heidari, Mona Al-Habib Nmeir, Rasfan Haval, Stefano Vona Bianchini, Tugba Tirpan, Yasmine Yagchi
And :
Fatema Niazy, Hossein Eyalati, Rodrigo B. Camacho, Sanjita Majumder
With works by: Amber Redican, Amy Dyer, Becca Heath, Dimitri Parthimos, Imogen Rough, Ioli Kavakou, Sacha Abela.