#larabaladi

Art projects by Wolfgang Tillmans, Riccardo Benassi and Lara Baladi that reflect upon the role of the viewer and the generation of new content through observation. 

Lecture by Marianna Liosi, What do images in public space do? - Symposium, University of Geneva, Geneva, 18 January 2017

Abstract:

Taking inspiration from a series of visual interventions by artists in the public space, my proposal aims to reflect on spectatorship in relation to images in the public environment as well as to explore the viewer’s engagement with these visual materials and which outcomes this individual agency can produce on a larger/collective scale.

I’ll present three art projects:

1.     The EU Referendum campaign by photographer Wolfgang Tillmans in view of UK’s vote on 7th June 2016 for Brexit (the exit of United Kingdom from EU) by mean of anti-conservatives propaganda posters affixed in the streets of several British towns;

2.     Daily Desiderio, the sculpture by Riccardo Benassi stating the search by the artist of his interlocutors for a daily dialogue. Daily Desiderio is going to be installed by the end of 2016 at City Life in Milan (a contemporary park of contemporary art currently under construction);

3.     The media initiative Tahrir Cinema, by artist Lara Baladi, consisting of video screenings in the street during the 2011 Egyptian uprising. These public projections served as public platforms to build and share an archive on and for the revolution. 

These three cases show the emancipatory potential of the image and open to an exploration of the emotional, empathic relation established with the viewer. How does the experience of images through vision generate agency and involvement? Assuming Jacques Rancière’s perspective on spectatorship, who states that “Every spectator is already an actor in her story; every actor, every man of action, is the spectator of the same story” the act of viewing is interpreted as potentially creative and generative of new discourses. Since the spectator is immersed in the space he/she lives and therefore he/she experiences the same spectacle (intending with this word a broad range of situations) he observes, for this reason image and viewer seems to contribute to the creation of new narratives, based on the act of seeing. How? The proposal introduces notions of affection, empathy as feelings that facilitate the experience of the image’s aesthetics, and therefore of its content as well as that stimulate to the individual’s response.

More info: http://www.unige.ch/sciences-societe/geo/conference-images/fr/

Lara Baladi

Lara Baladi Perfumes & Bazaar, The Garden of Allah, 2006 Digital Montage, Light Jet Print Mounted on Plexi 132 x 300 cm Edition of 8 + 2AP

Image courtesy of the artist

In the first years of the twenty-first century, the world was experiencing a certain kind of invasion: “made in China” was at its peak. Egypt and the rest of the world seemed to be flooded with plastic flowers; gold plastic frames; 3-D plastic representations of Jesus, Mecca, and the Hindu gods; and waterfalls that appeared to move. This caricatured paradise was everywhere I looked, especially in Egypt and other African countries, prompting me to explore this iconography. The Château de Versailles may be seen as the ultimate kitsch, a theatrical tour de force of excess, wealth, and abundance. The ruling monarchy in Egypt once imitated the luxury of French courtly life and advertised its grandeur to the greater public. 

The title of the piece is borrowed from the entrance sign of a perfume shop in a touristy area of Cairo and collaged onto the front of a house—a wannabe Château de Versailles—enthroned in the center of a manicured garden. The bucolic scene, reminiscent of baroque art, with its profusion of symbolic iconography and composition, is filled with the many levels and forms used across cultures to represent paradise. Here, my mother represents the womb, the original arcadia. She becomes, as do all the other elements in Perfumes & Bazaar, The Garden of Allah, one of the many prisms through which we imagine paradise: paradise as a social construct.