Artists
Alkadhi, Rheim
Port of Benghazi, Libya, 1974
(c) Rheim Alkadhi; Foto: Ann Bragdon
The interdisciplinary work of artist Rheim Alkadhi (b. 1973) opens various perspectives on gender, intimacy, migration, and borders in a remarkably poetic way. Her works are characterized by an ongoing search for a language to describe that range of topics. Employing direct object references, she forcefully questions cycles of injustice, the production and reproduction of precarious living conditions through mechanisms of exclusion and exploitation, and sheds light on complex biographies that are subject to an overarching, often specious, and inhuman system.
Deeply influenced by fleeting conditions, she moves continuously between shifting social and cultural mechanisms to break down familiar habits of seeing and give space to critical questions. Where do we come from? How do we arrive somewhere else? How do we fit into that which is alien or foreign to us?
Her works, an amalgamation of many individual details, serve as both clues and as an inventory of concise facts. Alkadhi’s Arrival Points (2021) finds scraps of fabric lying next to car tires, flotation devices, silverware, and a plastic bottle whose opaque, liquid urine testifies to many hours at sea. The found objects bear witness to capitalism, flight, and temporary arrival; the result is a collection of objects of survival. The work is based on an investigation of EU border crimes perpetrated on land and at sea, in particular those targeting migrants along the coast of Lesbos. In that sense, both the film Arrival Points and the material intervention Call for Immediate Reparations from the Waves of Our Mass Migration (2022), a work devised specifically for the Fellbach Triennial, can also be understood as critical
interventions.
Alkadhi’s works are moments of protest. Driven by political necessity, the artist invites us to follow her intimate gaze, to look, to perceive and understand - and in doing so, build contextualawareness so as to fully address questions of responsibility and ownership.
Text: Gloria Aino Grzywatz; englische Übersetzung: Amy Patton
The interdisciplinary work of artist Rheim Alkadhi (b. 1973) opens various perspectives on gender, intimacy, migration, and borders in a remarkably poetic way. Her works are characterized by an ongoing search for a language to describe that range of topics. Employing direct object references, she forcefully questions cycles of injustice, the production and reproduction of precarious living conditions through mechanisms of exclusion and exploitation, and sheds light on complex biographies that are subject to an overarching, often specious, and inhuman system.
Deeply influenced by fleeting conditions, she moves continuously between shifting social and cultural mechanisms to break down familiar habits of seeing and give space to critical questions. Where do we come from? How do we arrive somewhere else? How do we fit into that which is alien or foreign to us?
Her works, an amalgamation of many individual details, serve as both clues and as an inventory of concise facts. Alkadhi’s Arrival Points (2021) finds scraps of fabric lying next to car tires, flotation devices, silverware, and a plastic bottle whose opaque, liquid urine testifies to many hours at sea. The found objects bear witness to capitalism, flight, and temporary arrival; the result is a collection of objects of survival. The work is based on an investigation of EU border crimes perpetrated on land and at sea, in particular those targeting migrants along the coast of Lesbos. In that sense, both the film Arrival Points and the material intervention Call for Immediate Reparations from the Waves of Our Mass Migration (2022), a work devised specifically for the Fellbach Triennial, can also be understood as critical
interventions.
Alkadhi’s works are moments of protest. Driven by political necessity, the artist invites us to follow her intimate gaze, to look, to perceive and understand - and in doing so, build contextualawareness so as to fully address questions of responsibility and ownership.
Text: Gloria Aino Grzywatz; englische Übersetzung: Amy Patton