Backdrop

FEBRUARY 09 – APRIL 28, 2013

OPENING: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 08, 7 PM

Maryam Jafri works primarily with the media of video, photography, text and performance. She takes a research-based approach to her work, that frequently results in extensive video and photo installations. In these works, Jafri combines specific temporal and cultural zones. In the process, she uses various narrative forms and consciously fictionalises documentary archive material. Her works move between film and theatre, fact and fiction, historical models and subjective adaptations. Among her recurring topics are the global conditions of production and strategies of application, which she investigates through real settings, objects or persons. Jafri’s artistic praxis sometimes resembles associative role-playing by which she recounts unusual scenarios at the juncture of business, history and geography.

Maryam Jafri is showing two current works from the last couple of years, »Global Slum« (2012) and »Avalon« (2011), on the ground floor. Alongside them, the artist is presenting a new series of photographic works, which she has developed especially for the exhibition at the Bielefelder Kunstverein. The three-part group of works, »Getty vs. Ghana«, »Corbis vs. Mozambique«, »Getty vs. Kenya vs. Corbis« (2012) links to questions about the role of images already raised in Jafri’s ongoing project, »Independence Day 1936–1967« (since 2009). The new series contrasts with the earlier work by shifting the economic value of these photographs onto centre stage. In this work combining photos and texts, Jafri does not investigate the techniques of representation but instead investigates the cultural value in the histories of how these states develop.

Maryam Jafri, born in 1972 in Pakistan, lives and works in Copenhagen and New York. The artist’s most recent solo exhibitions have appeared at the Museet for Samtidskunst (Roskilde, Denmark), the exhibition space Beirut (Cairo, Egypt) and the CAAC Sevilla (all 2012). In addition, Jafri has participated widely in international group exhibitions, amongst others at CCA Wattis (San Francisco, USA) and F / Stop International Festival for Photography (Leipzig) (both 2012). In 2012, she took part in the Manifesta 9 (Genk, Belgium) as well as in the biennials in Shanghai and Taipei. Following on from her exhibition, »Costume Party: Colony & Negative« (2006) at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, the Bielefelder Kunstverein is organising Jafri’s second solo exhibition in Germany.

Curator: Thomas Thiel