Abdullah and Gloria Zein met eleven years back while studying Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. They both share a generous approach to scale and color allowing the artworks a spontanous, almost performative, character. Through a dialogue about texture, density and structure, both their artworks press pause on personal developments and suggest a new - temporary - form of reality.

part of Open Encounters with Abdullah Qureshi, Tasnim Bagdadi, Sara Khan, Syowia Kyambi, Natasha Jozi and Gloria Zein
Deepening the conversation around the artistic positions in Open Encounters, Abdullah Qureshi will engage in a personal discussion with each artist. Set up in front of the specific works, the talks circle around formal aspects of the multidiciplinary exhibition as well as around indivual and shared ambitions. Please also refer to our website for updates on prorgamming and Covid requirements.

FURTHER PROGRAM:

MARCH 13, 5.30 pm - 6.15 pm
THE POLITICS OF THE HUMAN TOUCH
The body as an important canvas for physical trauma and external projections, plays a central role in Natasha Jozi’s work. With political and social movements such as MeToo and Black Lives Matter, where the human body is navigating, redefining and fighting to protect the boundaries and sanctity of its space, her performance also explores the politics of the human touch.

MARCH 17, 6 pm - 7.15 pm
BLACKING OUT THE CANON
When Tasnim Baghdadi is “blacking out the canon” she questions hegemonial modes of thinking and canonic knowledge productions in art history, philosophy and religion. Her artistic practice subverts western modernisms through a re-appropriation of abstraction. In her conversation with Abdullah, both theorists will discuss disruptions of colonial continuities through knowledge as well as find out about the invisible, forgotten, folded and yet hidden aspects of artistic truth.

MARCH 19, 6 pm - 6.45 pm
ON MAGICAL REALISM
Just ilke Abdullah, Sara Khan was raised in Lahore (even though born in Birmingham) and adds a female gaze on the patriachal system in Pakistan - and beyond. In that formal, painterly conversation, they find beauty in mythology, visual symbolism and magical realism.