Hydra Pace Košice
Opening of the exhibition: 3.8.2021 at 6 p.m.
Duration of the exhibition: 4.8. – 22.8.2021
Opening hours: TUE- SAT, 10.00 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Východoslovenská Galéria pop-up space, Alžbetina 22
The exhibition in the East Slovak Gallery, at Alžbetina 22, presents the results of a two-month residency of artists Đejmi Hadrović and Nežka Zamar, which were created as part of an international project called Hydra Pace. The project brings together artists from Palestine, Slovenia and Slovakia live and online, whose task is to analyze the current situation and think about our future concerning coexistence, communities, connection, and co-experience. The artist Mohammed Al Hawajri, who lives in the Gaza Strip, was initially invited to realize his project in Košice, but at the time of his planned departure, the conflict with Israel was escalating, which, combined with anti-pandemic measures, made it impossible for him to travel to Košice. Thanks to the collaboration with Nežka Zamar and Ramallah Municipality, Mohammed will participate in the Košice exhibition at least through their joint work.
A soundwalk
A project by Nežka Zamar in collaboration with Orhan “aib” Kavrakoğlu
A soundwalk is a project that sits on the threshold between visual arts, literature, performance, sound, and street art. Pushing the limits of painting as a medium, it focuses on the visual research of the unmaterialized images. It is structured as a soundwalk, and its main component is a web of narratives, mapped out through the city, assigning collected records to their specific locations. Adding another layer to the cityscape, this interactive sound map operates outside the perceived timeline. The sounds of the re-created environment reproduce intangible imagery, that remains on the verge between fiction and reality.
Nežka Zamar is an interdisciplinary artist (*1990) who currently lives and works between Ljubljana, Slovenia and Venice, Italy. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice and continued her studies in visual arts at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Istanbul, and later graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice under the mentorship of professor Carlo di Raco. Her interdisciplinary artistic practise focuses on the interspace between materiality and concept, researching the boundaries of artistic mediums through subject representation.
Private Thoughts In Public Crisis
An installation by Đejmi Hadrović
The only private space that we possess is our mind which no one has access to our thoughts. This installation works in favour of private revolutions that are mostly invisible. The text offers a whimsical, sarcastic and yet critical stance towards world events that we have endured during the lockdown. It shares one’s view of the world’s issues from the couch in a comfortable zone.
Đejmi Hadrović is a media artist working in photography, video, installation and performance. She was nominated for the OHO Young Visual Artist Award in 2018 and has won several international awards. Her work has been exhibited and recognized internationally. Hadrović explores issues related to feminism, sexuality and gender in the post-Yugoslav space.
The blue in-between
Mohammed Al Hawajri and Nežka Zamar
The blue in-between is a video installation created in an attempt to overcome the status quo of physical borders. The installation consists of two video projections and the voiceovers of the two artists narrating their personal relation to something familiar between them: the sea, uniting, yet detaching them simultaneously. Two different experiences, two personal stories meet at a point that provides the audience with a sense of the importance of the sea in different contexts and a wide range of feelings associated with the Mediterranean.
Oh sea, are you… my father?
Mohammed Hawajri
The work, consisting of several photographs in its juxtaposition, creates a fictional panoramic view of the seascape. It documents, celebrates, and narrates the tales of Gaza and the Mediterranean, beyond humanitarian aid and crisis into the daily life of Gazans and their forever belonging to the sieged sea.
Mohammed Al Hawajri (*1976) is a Palestinian artist born and currently lives in Gaza Strip. Using different techniques and mediums, he reflects the daily conditions of life there – an experience of constant political, economic and social disruption. Al Hawajri desires to transform these circumstances into critical and often sarcastic interventions to bring people closer to the realities of different humanitarian issues. Al Hawajri’s work has been displayed in many exhibitions in Palestine and abroad.
Hydra PACE — Platform for Artistic Collaboration and Exchange is the collaboration of three partners Dobra Vaga (Slovenia), Ramallah Municipality (Palestine), and KAIR (Slovakia), aiming to form a growing network of existing and new international artist-in-residency programs for established and emerging artists. The project is co-funded by the Anna Lindh Foundation and the European Union. The residency program of KAIR Košice Artist Residence is supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council.