ABSENCE is a performance art exhibition in which the machines represent the six artists living in different geographical locations.
As the second lockdown was imposed in Germany, and with living in lockdown being the new normal across the world, the artists decided to document their lives on hundreds of office papers using drawings, texts, sketches, collages, photographs, and many other types of media. To give free rein to the artists’ freedom of expression and psychological depth, the papers will remain anonymous and not bear any signatures, only showing the date and time of creation.
With the lack of the opportunity for the artists to be personally present in the gallery, each artist will present her works from her specific geographical location by connecting to a printer via the internet and print her papers continuously over a period of six minutes every day for six consecutive days. All of this is going to happen in a space where the audience cannot be present; they can only experience the exhibition through a live stream that will display the flow of the papers and their arrival to the space through the printers, the presentation itself being part of the performance and installation as well.
This exhibition is offering an artistic space in a time of uncertainty and is an attempt to explore what has happened to the world during these past few months. The shown works serve as a unique kind of anonymous diary of the artists’ reactions to their situation, a stream of documentation examining the concepts of absence and presence during a global pandemic.
After the exhibition, the paper works will be collected and organized after date and time of creation and bound together in a book to be presented later.
Hana El-Sagini is a visual artist born in Egypt. She was taught and mentored by her father who, when he suddenly passed away, left her with a wealth of questions about loss, remembrance, and love that she is trying answer through her work. She is equally fascinated with painting and sculpting, playing around with and combining both in her practice, while engaging the spectator to be part of her work. El-Sagini has won several awards, including The Dean collection award in 2018. She currently lives in Dusseldorf, Germany, and works between Cairo and Dusseldorf.
Hend Elbalouty is an Egyptian production designer, choreographer, performer, and writer. She works across mediums, combining and mixing them in accordance with the project at hand. Her work primarily reflects on taboos surrounding the female body, race, and the forgery of history. Currently, Elbalouty is an MA student at the Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln, where she is researching the relation between art and social class, creating a performance based on local Egyptian dance and music (Mahraganat).
Marian Aazer, artist name Lina Aazer, is an Egyptian artist born in Cairo in 1986. She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo with a Bachelor's degree and with a Master's degree from the Institute of Artistic Ceramics and Glass (IKKG), Höhr-Grenzhausen. Her work reflects her personal vision of others and the surrounding world, as well as the impact of creation and the environment on consciousness raising.
Razan Sabbagh is a Syrian artist based in Hamburg whose artwork frequently revolves around exploring the relationship between art, activism, and power. Her work mostly consists of performance pieces that use a direct physical confrontation with the audience to make a political point. She is interested in the intersection of politics, space, sound, and human rights violations and in the sonic domain as a political power in Syria. Sabbagh is Currently an MA student at the Kunsthochschule für Bildende Künst Saarbrücken.
Rozeen Bisharat is a Berlin-based filmmaker, artist, and activist born in Nazareth in 1986. She studied film at Tel Aviv University and has worked on many different award-winning productions. Bisharat’s feature documentary Terez and I, produced by Trabelsi Productions and scheduled to be released late 2021, investigates the changes in methods of resistance across generations and the role of women within it. Her experimental documentary project Quarantine a manual, launched soon after Covid-19 lockdowns, explores the spatial and emotional transition of our relation to home.
Ruba Salameh is a visual artist born in Nazareth. She obtained both her BFA and MFA from the Bezalel Academy for Arts and Design in Jerusalem and currently lives and works in Berlin. In her work she uses different mediums including painting, video, photography, and mixed media installations. Salameh’s work deals with notions of land, geographies, displacement, and nationalism.
Artist Training is a qualification program offered by the Universität der Künste Berlin Career College aimed at the qualification, consulting, and networking of artists in exile.
coculture is a Berlin-based non-profit cultural organisation working at the intersection of art, activism, and community-building and dedicated to addressing the challenges faced by displaced cultural producers.