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Worth Ryder Art Gallery

September 28 - October 23, 2011

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University of California, Berkeley 116 Kroeber Hall Berkeley, CA 94720
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In Mind and Memory Dena al-Adeeb & Sama Alshaibi, "Efface/Remain" from "Baghdadi Mem/Wars," 2010
Reception Wednesday, September 28, 4-7 PM "In Mind and Memory" presents two research-based artistic collaborations. Using multiple-channel video and still photographs, these two pairs of artists respond in their works to experiences of being marginalized in a globally-connected world. Autobiographical inquiry takes on abstracted, poetic form in Baghdadi Mem/Wars (2010) by Dena al-Adeeb and Sama Alshaibi, which references the artists’ personal and family histories of war and migration from Iraq to the United States. State of Mind (2008) by Annica Karlsson Rixon and Anna Viola Hallberg, is a documentary-based body of work about LGBTQ communities in St. Petersburg, Russia, in which first-person narratives are presented simultaneously in an installation alongside family portrait photos of their subjects. In both bodies of work, identity is complicated by other realities, necessitating a camouflage approach to social constructs. In this condition, the self retains autonomy only within the mind’s interior. Annica Karlsson Rixon and Anna Viola Hallberg’s “State of Mind” is based in personal stories and group portraits. The artists collaborated with activists and select individuals in St. Petersburg during repeat visits from 2006-2008. “State of Mind” introduces a discussion of intercultural perspectives to identity politics. The stories are selected from documentary material collected in great trust between the artists and the interviewees in fieldwork. On seven monitors, all together, 39 people personally talk about life in St. Petersburg addressing LGBTQ issues, East-West, private situations and confrontations, and the view of the future. They span in age from 17-67 and include students, journalists, psychologists, pole dancers, physicians, office workers, drivers, poets, lawyers, academics, business owners, rock stars, house wives et cetera. The video installation is constructed as a group portrait with a projection of the Neva River as a backdrop. In the large-format photographs, friends and families gather at different sites in St Petersburg. The audio is based on documentary elements shaped into a ambient sound piece of the city. Dena Al-Adeeb and Sama Alshaibi’s “Baghdadi Mem/Wars” is a video and photography series in three suites: “Still/Chaos,” “Efface/Remain,” and “Absence/Presence.” The conceptual premise of this installation in three-channel video and still photographs is rooted in the corporal, intellectual, and emotional embodiment of war and displacement. Emanating from the artists’ lived experiences and personal bodily memories of a lifetime in the trenches of an undying war, “Baghdadi Mem/Wars” paints the landscape of the artists’ brush with annihilation. The psychosomatic narrative presented in this series of work manifests and replays on the topography of body, memory, and spirit. Co-sponsored by UC Berkeley Department of Art Practice with Center for Middle Eastern Studies; Institute for Slavic, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies; Scandinavian Department; Center for Race and Gender; Beatrice Bain Research Group; and Center for the Study of Sexual Cultures at UC Berkeley. Support for the exhibition also provided by IASPIS, The Swedish Art Grants Committee's International Programme for Visual Artists; Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg; Department of Cultural Sciences, University of Gothenburg; Pro Suecia Barbro Osher Foundation; The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation; and The Painter’s Place, San Francisco. Gallery hours: Tues-Sat 12-5 PM
In Mind and Memory Annica Karlsson Rixon & Anna Viola Hallberg, "State of Mind," 2009