421 Arts Campus, an independent arts platform, is holding Nine Nodes of Non-Being, a group show featuring such art practitioners as Mariam AlZayani, Faycal Baghriche, Clemencia Echeverri, Irtiza Malik, Zara Mahmood, Amba Sayal-Bennet, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Ayman Zedani, and the UNMAKE LAB duo. Curated by Ritika Biswas, the exhibition will end on 31 December 2023.
Although climate and scientific data on human and non-human extinctions are clear and available, most of us do not believe that we will become extinct. This stems from our incapacity to critically and ontologically deal with what the climate crisis truly means for us. In their works on view in the Nine Nodes of Non-Being exhibition, the artists address climate-related extinction through different states of denial and excess and explore ways of existing more equitably within the current ecological crises.
About the participants
Mariam AlZayani (b. 1996, Manama, Bahrain) is an Abu Dhabi-based designer and artist. Asking “what if?” is at the core of her practice. Her work, which seeks to ask questions, is inspired by her interests, surroundings, and daily life. In her projects, the artist reintroduces viewers to the mundane and the absurdities lying within it.
Faycal Baghriche (b. 1972, Skidda, Algeria), an interdisciplinary artist residing in Paris, graduated from Villa Arson Nice (France). After that, he moved to Paris, where he took part in creating La Villa du Lavoir (an artist’s residence) and Le Commissariat (a curatorial structure). Baghriche’s practice encompasses performance, installation, video, and photography. Interested in exploring common rituals and patterns of social behaviour, his public intervention works seek to disrupt the rhythm of contemporary urban life to subvert conventional expectations.
Clemencia Echeverri (b. 1950, Salaminas, Caldas, Colombia) is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Bogotá (Colombia). Her work is rooted in extensive research including field trips. She employs drawing, video, photography, installation, and sound to delve into troubled topics in the social, political, cultural, and environmental arena in her home country. Among these topics are violence, memory, loss, grief, and enforced disappearance.
Visual artist Irtiza Malik (b. 1999, Srinagar, Kashmir, India) works across installation, video, sound, text, and sculpture. In her practice, she aims to develop speculative vocabularies towards the dimensions of contested territories and associated questions of language, memory, everyday life, and history writing. Malik draws her inspiration from folklore, storytelling, myth-making, and local histories.
Dubai-based artist and musician Zara Mahmood (b. 1982, Lahore, Pakistan) obtained a BFA (Printmaking) from the National College of Arts (Lahore) and an MFA (Painting) from the University for the Creative Arts (UK). In her delicate minimalistic artworks, Mahmood narrates her everyday environment, among other things.
Multidisciplinary artist Amba Sayal-Bennet (b. 1991, London, UK), who lives in her hometown, uses drawing, projection, and sculptural installation in her practice. Her recent body of work is dedicated to the migration of modernist forms and their role within fascist and brutalist architecture. The artist explores the movement of bodies, knowledge, and form across different sites: processes inherent to the diasporic experience.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul (b. 1970, Bangkok, Thailand) is a recognised filmmaker and visual artist. His non-linear works (installations, videos, short and feature films), which often feature ordinary people rather than actors, occupy a space between documentary and fiction inspired by the lives of his subjects. The themes Weerasethakul delves into in his artworks are memory, loss, identity, desire, and history.
Through his videos, installations, and immersive environments, Ayman Zedani (b. 1984, Saudi Arabia) seeks to upend our comprehension of the past and challenge our acceptance of the future. In his works, he examines the interactions and relationships of humans in the more-than-human world. The construction and consumption of nature in the Gulf are central to his explorative process, as well as elements of animist and polytheistic themes found in pre-Islamic Arabia.
UNMAKE LAB (Seoul, South Korea) was founded in 2018 by two women, Binna Choi and Sooyon Song. They explore the feedback loops and mechanisms of information technology society and question the emerging technological systems and orders. The duo analyses the relationship between humans, technology, and society and reconfigures it through artistic interventions and experiments. Recently, the collective has focused on issues that surround human-centred culture, neocolonialism, and ecological catastrophe.
To learn more about Nine Nodes of Non-Being, please visit the show’s official web page.
You might also be interested in attending Salmah Almansoori’s solo exhibition at Firetti Contemporary.
