Ibrahim Quraishi

My Private Himalaya 

Tue 24 & Wed 25 April | 21:00 - 21:50 hrs | Akademietheater | (My Private Himalaya)

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Wild Life Take Away Station

Sat 21 & Sun 22 April | 12:00 -17:00 hrs continuously | CM Studio | (Wild Life Take Away Sation)
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“how will future anthropologists interpret the heaps of garbage on the Himalaya”

Object and human bodies begin to inhabit their conflicting dynamics. The body is the medium between transcendence and materialization. Between hysteria and mediation. Between silence and frenzy. It is about the unsolvable dialectic of presence and absences of the body in religion, art, philosophy and society.

Imagine a man and a woman inhabiting a specially constructed space for 24 hours and exploring the effects associated with the revelation of hidden paradoxes that manifest themselves when supposedly secrets are unveiled but never revealed. Imagine two people caught in their own time warp, their own ideological trap and  dealing with symbioses between the human and the animalistic; between a dream state and a national sense of social unity inside the confines of an extremely tamed environment. In stripping every inch of contextual reality out of its psychological realm, Wild Life Take Away Station, is at the same time revealing the imprisonment of an imagined reality that perhaps never occurred inside an old abandoned traditional wooden house.

BIO

Ibrahim Quraishi belongs to a new generation of makers challenging our understanding of visualperformativity and its relationship to the broader cultural perspective. As one of the recipients of the first Ö1 Prix Jardin d’Europe Prize in 2008 for his Installation Islamic Violins at Kunsthalle, Wien, Quraishi consciously examines the dynamics of "migration", dispossession and cohabitation within the highly rigid socio-political spheres of imagined communities inside the contours of the visual arts context, while freely playing with the tensions between the complexity of the real and our longing for simplicity. Defined by a nomadic existence, Quraishi divides his time in multiple cities escaping the conventional rules of engagement in researching, teaching and creating works for spaces like MASSMoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), National Museum of Singapore, Japan Foundation Tokyo, Asia Society (New York), ImPulsTanz (Vienna), Holland Festival (Amsterdam), BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival New York), Springdance (Utrecht), iDANS Istanbul, Biennale Bonn among others. Among some of most recent artistic ventures, Ibrahim created the original Disappeared in America project with Naeem Mohaiemen and Visual Collective in 2005 -06 for The Queens Museum and other venues. Quraishi`s most recent essays have been for the French newspaper Libèration and for Paul D. Millers aka DJ Spooky`s new book Sound Unbound (MIT Press 2008), Beyond The Frames: A collection, (Impress Publishing Company 2010). His first catalogue book was published by the National Museum of SIngapore (2007).

On the level of research, from 2006 Quraishi created an education model/block called The Political Body for the Dutch graduate school DasArts in Amsterdam, inviting such artists as Shirin Neshat, Jan Fabre, Pamela Z, Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky amongst others, while consecutively lecturing / teaching at Universität der Künste Berlin, Africa Center, Cape Town, Beaconhouse University (Lahore), iPod, Beriut, SNDO: Hogeschool Voor De Kunsten Amsterdam, The New School (New York), Institut für Theater-Film und Medienwissenschaft Universität Wien, Williamstown College - Clark Arts Institute (Massachusetts), Kyoto University for Art & Design, Kyoto, The International Center for Photography (New York), Brown University (Rhode Island), Montclair College (New Jersey), MQ-Tanzquartier Wien, SEAD Salzburg, Université de Paris 8, Université de St. Denis, C.R.O.U.S. de Paris, National School of Drama (New Delhi). Most recently Quraishi is invited to be a member of theFaculty of Visual Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Acadamie in Amsterdam. Quraishi was a former student of Edward W. Said at Columbia University, New York.

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