Edge of Arabia, in partnership with Art Jameel and the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), and with additional support from the Zedan Group, awarded its first artist residency in the United States to Palestinian artist Taysir Batniji, and Foundland, an artist collective from Syria and South Africa. A central component of this multi-year US tour, the concurrent 3-month long residencies allowed Batniji and Foundland (comprised of Lauren Alexander and Ghalai Elsrakbi) to participate in the ISCP’s acclaimed studio program in Brooklyn from July through September 2014. The programme supported the artists’ practices and immersed them in the cultural landscape of New York.

OUTCOMES

The artists presented 3 exhibitions across 2 cities (New York & Baltimore) as part of their residencies reaching a wider audience of over 1,500 people:

1. “Escape Routes and Waiting Rooms” by Foundland, July 30th – September 26th, 2014, at the ISCP, Brooklyn, New York. Download Press Release here. In Escape Routes and Waiting Rooms, Foundland investigates personal stories of mobility and migration around Syria, a place where freedom of movement is strictly restricted due to its ongoing civil war. In two newly created installations, a Syrian family’s dinner table is re-staged to depict a schematic map of a family where most of the members have migrated from the country over time. The work reveals intimate family moments and history set in a ravaged country where millions of people are displaced. Also included in this exhibition is a tent and video installation modeled on actual tents used in Za’tari camp in Jordan, one of the largest Syrian refugee camps in the world. Originally serving as a temporary living space, a refugee tent can be considered a “waiting room” for an unknown future. Foundland visualizes the potentiality of the tent as a symbolic transformative structure, which initially facilitates temporary, emergency landscapes, but could become the starting point for new communities over time. This exhibition was organized by Kari Conte, Director of Programs and Exhibitions with Shinnie Kim, Programs Manager. A catalog was published to accompany the exhibition with a commissioned text by Nat Muller, an independent curator and critic specializing in media art and contemporary art in and from the Middle East.

2. Taysir Batniji solo presentation about his practice at ISCP in Williamsburg, New York. Taysir recounted his journey from Palestine to Europe, and particularly France, where he arrived in 1995, as well as a selection of works he has realized in recent years. In between France and Palestine - both geographically and culturally - he developed a multidisciplinary art practice in which the image, photo and video occupies an important place. He devotes part of his work to analyzing the process of media information, especially news in the Middle East.

3. Taysir Batniji in conversation with Dina Al-Sowayal and alongside Fred Baldwin, Wendy Watriss, Sarah Abu Abdullah, Stephen Stapleton and Professor Ussama Makdisi as part of CULTURUNNERS launch at the Rothko Chapel in Houston.

4. Foundland in conversation with critic, curator and founder of Arte East, Livia Alexander under the theme: “Visualizing Displacement And Other Stories”, at ISCP in New York. In the context of their solo exhibition at ISCP, Escape Routes and Waiting Rooms, Foundland discussed some of the central themes covered in their exhibition related to subjective strategies of mapping, as well as the relation between their work and the media’s reportage of the Syrian situation. They touched on previous works that examine how the conflict is represented on social media through the creative expression of activists and propaganda-makers.

All three artists began new bodies of work during the residency and expressed their intentions to return to the US to develop their projects.