[It's LIQUID News] Cities on the edge

 

.art news November 21, 2013
Anahita Razmi, Roof Piece Teheran. Video frame   Cities on the edge   Centre for Contemporary Art Laznia in Gdansk kindly invite you for three events within Cities on the edge.   Bogota. City on the edge Opening: 22.11.2013, 18.00 23.11.2013 – 19.01.2014   Artists: Jaime Ávila, Alberto Lezaca de Paz, Andrés R. Londoño, Adriana Salazar Curators: Sylwia Krasoń,  John Angel Rodriguez Centre for Contemporary Art, ul. Jaskółcza 1, 80-767 Gdańsk/Poland   The exhibition presents Bogota city through the artists’ eyes, which gaze focuses on their experience living and working in the capital of the country. Bogota has emerged in the last decade as a one of the megacities in Latin America with the highest development and growth index, characterized by a multicultural complexity coexisting with enormous problems of social gaps and security. The exhibition is an attempt to understand how this melting pot produces this disseminated and boiling artistic dynamics. The gathered artwork reveals the social and urban power of the city. Artists raise questions about how the city dwellers cope with errors and imperfections of a system. The system in where an urban development is a fiction and where the structure of power is unpredictable and beyond imagination.   The Visions of Colombia. The screening of documentaries23-24.11.2013   Curator: Madeleine Navarro Mena Kinoport, ul. Strajku Dokerów 5, Gdańsk Nowy Port/Poland   The selection  focuses on the particular vision of the directors on the re-current themes that Colombia invokes in the public conscience: the violence of armed conflict, its aftermath and drug trafficking.  But more than anything, the documentaries in this selection depict an almost magical capacity of the reinvention and survival of Colombian people, so often mentioned and celebrated in the work of their most renowned writer – Gabriel García Márquez.   The Wall Behind Which Something/Nothing٭ Happened07.11.2013-19.01.2014   Artists: Anahita Razmi, Magdalena Mellin Curator: Agnieszka Kulazińska Centre for Contemporary Art, ul. Jaskółcza 1, 80-767 Gdańsk/Poland   The Wall Behind Which Something/Nothing٭ Happened focuses on the interpretation of historical facts and our expectations as to traces of events. The display is based on juxtaposing the works of two artists: Magdalena Mellin and Anahita Razmi. The first presents a wall in Beirut behind which nothing happened, the second – a wall in Teheran behind which something happened. The exhibition poses the question of narratives we build based on the facts we are given. What happened behind the wall recalled by the artists? The answer to this question will have to be provided by the viewers themselves. The exhibition was supported by Goethe Institute.   The presentations are part of the series Cities on the edge, which aims to analyse the art of areas on edge – areas located beyond the scope of our interest, associated with conflict rather than art. The project was supported by Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.   more. www.laznia.pl