Mia Jankowicz is Artistic Director of Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo.

This blog is being reorganised, please bear with me while I move material around.

Review of ‘Material’ – Iman Issa solo exhibition at Rodeo, Istanbul

First published in Frieze 2011. Many thanks to Mohammed Abdallah for Arabic translation and Doa Aly for Arabic copyediting. للنص العربي انظر أسفل الصفحة‬ شكر خاص للمترجم محمد عبدالله وللمراجعة دعاء علي

Iman Issa’s exhibition ‘Material’, developed a critical position around monuments quite different to that of the ‘anti-monument’. Anti-monuments, after all, are now part of the mainstream. The British public, for example, not only instantly grasped the critical thrust of the unassuming, feminized, interactive aspects of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain (2004) in Hyde Park, London, but also fully and instinctively grasped the  failures of this very criticality. Monument and anti-monument have a complementary relationship that completes a circle and constitutes – as is the fate of all subversions – only the expansion of a language. Issa maintains her parallel relationship to this language by producing, not monuments or anti-monuments but ‘material for’ sculptures that might address the failings of, or apply alternative possibilities for, existing monuments.

Iman Issa, 'Material for a sculpture recalling the destruction of a prominent public monument in the name of national resistance' 2011. Image courtesy of Rodeo Gallery

Curator with a capital C or Dilettante with a Small d

A response to Greenhouse Tomatoes and Outdoor Tomatoes by Maria Lind in the Attitudes section of The Exhibitionist issue 3, in which she discusses the conditions and tendencies of curatorial education; this response published in issue 4, May 2011.

A convenient generation divide in curating is easily observed, or at least frequently invoked, between those who began curating before the emergence of curatorial programs and those who did so after. Curators advanced in their careers are often heard pronouncing in panel discussions that they never undertook a curatorial program, with the implication that they are proof positive of the superfluity of curatorial education. What is rarely asked in these situations is, had curatorial programs been available at the sprouting of these careers, whether at least some of them might have given it a go?

On Doa Aly’s A Tress of Hair

Written for the Indicated by Signs – Contested Public Space, Gendered Bodies, and Hidden Sites of Trauma in Contemporary Visual Art Practices, eds hamzamolnar, a publication accompanying a group curatorial project of the same name. للغة العربية حرك الماوس لأسفل The bilingual publication will be launched in Cairo on 31st October 2010. Arabic translation (below) courtesy of Lina Attalah and hamzamolnar, with many thanks.

Doa Aly, still from 'A Tress of Hair' (2008) 12'43"

Some images: my cat’s tufty little forelegs are a source of great comfort to me, planted either side of her fat furry stomach. I can barely keep my mind off her for more than a few minutes, particularly given her constant determination to walk across my keyboard. Yet before I can give her insistent paws yet another shove, I’m involuntarily recalling the knees of a horse I saw today in the middle of a market lane, shivering and cringing like a shy supermodel caught in the drizzle. And from that there is the image of a pair of camel legs cut off at the knee, standing neatly and horrifically alone in the unpaved alley as though the rest of the animal had just chosen to detach them and walk away on the stumps.

Stand, I Don’t: an interview with Charles Esche

An interview conducted between de Appel Curatorial Programme 2008/2009 and Charles Esche, Director of the Van Abbemuseum, edited by me. Published 2010 in the anthology Curating and The Educational Turn, eds Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson.

Mia Jankowicz:

When I worked in a small space in South London, my colleague, who was coordinator for education, did a youth workshop about protest. It was themed around participation, speaking up, the right to self expression, and so on. The participants were about ten years old and included a lot of kids with a tendency to misbehave, and the workshop went pretty well. At the end, they were asked to make protest placards, really nice wooden signs with their messages on them. out of all of them, the best one was cryptic and seemed very ‘conceptual’. It said:

And also, what of the sheet? – on Frances Stark

Essay commissioned for catalogue accompanying But what of Frances Stark, standing by itself, a naked name, bare as a ghost to whom one would like to lend a sheet?, solo exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary.

Frances Stark, Readying for Reflection. Vinyl paint, collage on panel, 36 × 62 in, 2006.

And also, what of the sheet? - on Frances Stark

But what of Frances Stark, standing by itself, a naked name, bare as a ghost to whom one would like to lend a sheet? does a lot of things as an exhibition title. It is a title and a proposal for a title, a discussion of the idea that ’Frances Stark’ on its own might need some help. It is not as coy as one might think; had the show just been called ‘Frances Stark’ – the title would go uncommented-upon, so it provokes a discussion of the very translucency a sheet might cover up.

On Hamra Abbas’ MoMA is the Star

Written as a contribution to the catalogue for Abbas’ solo exhibition at Green Cardamom, London, Adventures of the Woman in Black Nov-Dec 2008

 

Combined stills from Hamra Abbas' MoMA is the star (2004) digital video

At the Berlin Biennial this year [2008], I like everybody else visited the Neue Nationalgalerie. Such visits seem to be made up of seven parts distraction, three parts attention, and when I was caught between a sugar low and a Susan Hiller my eye fell on a small black and pink sticker. Das MoMA in Berlin it announced, in cheerfully bombastic graphics.

My life is hanging by a thread – on Zeeshan Muhammad’s Dying Miniature

On Zeeshan Muhammad’s ‘Dying Miniature’
Catalogue text for his exhibition at Green Cardamom Nov 2008-Feb 2009

My life is hanging by a thread.
- Florence Nightingale, 1896.

Zeeshan Muhammad, Dying Miniature, graphite on sandpaper 2008

Get down with the let down

G

Internet macro posted on the Livejournal community stupid_free in response to a call for images on the theme of 'BAWWWWWWWW'. The unknown author is thanked.

Disappointment is a difficult thing to glorify. In trying to come up with a good, pop-historical list of the world’s greatest disappointments for this text, I thought of nothing that isn’t better characterised by treachery, failure, and misfortune (all of which have their glorious aspects), and no disappointment that isn’t eclipsed by the tragedy of its own effects.

review – Soi Project’s Island

Soi Project – Island
Ikon Eastside, Birmingham, UK

Soi Project’s Island was not conveniently reached except by taxi, through an unlovely set of light industrial streets clearly earmarked for ‘cultural development’ by the local council. However, arriving at the Ikon Gallery’s newest offsite space, in Birmingham’s East Side, it was impossible not to marvel at the contrast – at least when I visited, on the most assiduously wet day of the year – with the fact that I was visiting a tropical Thai island. (Surely the gallery marketing department’s easiest sell ever.)