ART CITIES:Cologne-Between One Time and Another

Like a prism, the exhibition “One Time and Another”, refracts a single history into multiple stories. The concept of the exhibition evolves from the researchof the guest curator Maier-Rothe in the notion of projection with its cultural and historical implications. Focusing on colonial and hegemonic moments of projection that appear already historicised and past, although they continue to govern the extended presence of traditional power relations.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Temporary Gallery Archive

The works of Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, Fadlabi, Rana Hamadeh and Kapwani Kiwanga, speculate on future-pasts, they question stratigraphic oracles and expose new concepts of “otherness” as out-dated strategies of alienation. Mute things are given voice and once-forgotten ideas reappear as fantastic interpretations of today’s power balances, strange encounters with local heroes and fossil witnesses of colonial inversion. Based on his research into former Portuguese colonies, Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc’s film “Ça va, ça va, on continue” addresses the relation of image production and the representation of anti-colonial struggle for independence. The wall painting “About Menelik II”, is Fadlabi’s own version of Ethiopia’s defeat of the Italian colonizers in the 1896 Battle of Adwa. His stylistic citation of Ethiopian church paintings alludes to the marginalised role they are given within Eurocentric art history. “even the wind wants to become a cart pulled by butterflies”, is an installation in homage to the Syrian-born Lebanese poet and essayist Adonis, also known as Ali Ahmad Said. Rana Hamadeh stages two complementary sketches of her new opera-under-development in a live performance and an installation. Hamadeh’s immersive sound play, “Can You Pull In an Actor With a Fishhook or Tie Down His Tongue With a Rope?”, decrypts the affective layers of the Ashura ritual. Looking at the configurations of power in the Syrian-Lebanese political weave, the performance re-dramatizes the ritual’s recent transformation from militant theatre into a militarized form of theatre. Her installation, “Can You Make a Pet of Him Like a Bird or Put Him on a Leash For Your Girls?”, serves as a proposal for the opera’s scenography, extracting textual elements from the play and recasting them as stage setting without actors. Kapwani Kiwanga approaches the history of African-European relations via the so-called “Afrotunnel”, a hypothetical underwater passage between Morocco and Spain. Using geological, cultural, and technological artefacts, her multimedia installation “Strata (Technicolor)”, interprets tectonic shifts as a restructuring of ideological influences in a narrative constellation that is both historical and speculative in nature.

Info: Curator: Jens Maier-Rothe, Temporary Gallery, Centre for contemporary art, Mauritiuswall 35, Cologne, Duration: 15/4-19/6/16, Day & Hours: Thu-Fri 14:00-18:00, Sat-Sun 13:00-17:00, www.temporarygallery.org