Film program Borderland at SSE
Smadar Dreyfus
Smadar Dreyfus was born in 1963 in Israel, she currently lives in London since 1990. Dreyfus holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, and a Master of Fine Arts from the Royal College of Art, followed by postgraduate studies at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL. Smadar Dreyfus is interested in how meaning is both created and reconstructed at the intersection of the aural and the visual. In several of her works she has separated image and sound to present different perspectives on the same scene. Dreyfus investigates the voice as it embodies social relations and mediates between the individual and the collective. Often, she uses real-life recorded material, but decisively eschews any documentary conventions. A selection of Dreyfus solo exhibitions include Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2014); Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Sweden (2009); Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerpen (2008). Group exhibitions include the Busan Biennale, South Korea (2018); CaixaForum Barcelona, Spain (2018); Berlin Documentary Forum 3, Germany (2014).
Jumana Emil Abboud
Jumana Emil Abboud, born in 1971, lives and works between Jerusalem and London. She received a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and a postgraduate diploma from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem (1996 and 1999, respectively). She is pursuing a PhD at the Slade School of Art, University College London (2019–present). Abboud uses drawing, video, performance, objects and text to navigate themes of memory, loss and resilience. Her interests lie in oral histories, the investigation and retelling of personal and collective stories and mythologies, and the interlinkages between these stories in both natural and cultural landscapes. Her work has often reflected a Palestinian cultural landscape, in which the struggle for continuity amid the wider political context necessitates a constant process of metamorphosis and ingenuity. During the past decade, Abboud’s work has been presented in numerous international solo and group exhibitions and festivals, including Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) (2019); Ashkal Alwan – The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, Beirut (2019); The Jerusalem Show iX/Qalandiya International (2018); The Palestinian Museum, Birzeit (2018); Tate Modern, London (2018); Gallery Travesia Cuatro, Madrid (2018); A. M. Qattan Foundation, Ramallah (2018); Sharjah Biennial 13: Tamawuj Off-site project in Ramallah (2017); Bildmuseet, Umeå University, Sweden (2017); Darat Al Funun, Amman (2017); Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre, Ramallah (2016); 56th Venice Biennial (2015); Center for Contemporary Art, Malmö (2014); Al-Mahatta Gallery, Ramallah + Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), London (2013); the 4th Riwaq Biennale/Qalandiya International, Ramallah (2012); 11th Istanbul Biennial (2009) and Magasin 3, Stockholm (2007). Her works are held in private and public collections including The Khalid Shoman Collection (Amman); Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art (Stockholm); The Isabelle & Jean-Conrad Lemaitre collection; The Israel Museum (Jerusalem); Daniel Sachs Foundation (Stockholm); George Al Ama collection at Dar Al Sabagh Diaspora Studies and Research Centre (Bethlehem); The Palestinian Museum (Birzeit); Ashkal Alwan, The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts (Beirut), and Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) among others. Photo: Issa Freij.
Mircea Cantor
Mircea Cantor was born in 1977 in Romania. He is best known for his evocative, metaphorical videos and mixed-media installations, Cantor makes work reflective of a broad worldview that is at once optimistic and trenchantly critical. In his works, he examines competing ideologies, war, displacement, the self and the other, and multivalence. Keenly aware of the multitude of meanings that a word or an object can contain, he deliberately mixes materials and uses language playfully, producing poignant, challenging works that defy categorization. We know who we are, so why not go deeper? Let’s stand for something other than our nationality. [. . .] [My] objects speak of the great openness in which we can live today, beyond national categories. – Mircea Cantor Cantor won the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2011. Photo: Gabriela Vanga.
Vangelis Vlahos
Vangelis Vlahos was born in 1971 in Athens, where he lives and works. He has studied at the Manchester Metropolitan University in England and School of Fine Arts in Athens. A selection of Vlahos exhibitions include the 7th Thessaloniki Biennale (2019); Depo, Istanbul (2019); documenta 14, Kassel (2017); Museum of Fine Arts, Tel Aviv (2017); Kunstverein Stuttgart (2014); Witte de With, Rotterdam (2011); Serralves Museum, Porto (2010); Prague City Gallery, Prague (2009); NGBK & Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin (2009); 11th Istanbul Biennial (2009); 27th São Paulo Biennale (2006); Dundee Centre for Contemporary Arts, Dundee (2005); 3rd Berlin Biennale (2004) and Manifesta 5, San Sebastian (2004). Vlahos works are held in private and public collections including Tate Modern, London; Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens and Teixeira de Freitas Collection, Lisbon.
Cecilia E. Parsberg
Cecilia Parsberg holds a Ph.D in Fine Arts, she lives and works in Stockholm and commutes to Karlstad University where she is a Senior Lecturer in Visual Arts with 30 % research. Her works have been exhibited at Tate in London, and at Moderna Museet, Nationalmuseum and Magasin III in Stockholm. Current shows are “A Place in Europe”– a touring public artwork, and “The Chorus of Begging and The Chorus of Giving” – an installation in the Swedish Arts Grants Committee project Choreographies of the Social in Stockholm. Her latest published essays are ”We are losers and you have to learn from us” included in the international and interdisciplinary anthology Heritage and Borders published in September 2019, by the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University, in collaboration with the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities and the essay ”Voices” in the anthology Can a Person be Illegal? Refugees, Migrants and Citizenship in Europe, published by Uppsala University (2017). Her Doctoral dissertation, How do you become a successful beggar in Sweden? An inquiry into the images of begging and giving in Sweden 2011-2016, consists of nine text chapters and six staged works.
Janine Antoni
Janine Antoni was born in in 1964 in Freeport, Bahamas. She lives and works in New York. She received her bachelor from Sarah Lawrence College in New York and earned her Master of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1989. Antoni sees her work as an ongoing process like the daily tasks our lives are – largely – made up of. Her work consists of turning these tasks into sculptural processes in which she explores the possibilities offered by the body to create meaning. Curator Richard Julin asked the artists participating in the Free Port exhibition held in 2001 to take Frihamnen (the Stockholm harbor site of Magasin III whose name means “Free port”) as their broad theme. The exhibition explored Magasin III from a historical and site-specific perspective. Antoni retur¬ned to her place of birth, which just happens to be the town of Freeport in the Bahamas. She gathered together material from friends and family and – using material objects as diverse as cat hair and lace, shoelaces and crisp bags – the artist created a 78 meter-long rope woven through with stories and memories. Moor is a work of art in a state of permanent change – every time the rope is exhibited new components are added, new life-fragments are intertwined. Antoni’s solo exhibitions include Accelerator, Stockholm (2018); Institute of International Visual Arts, London (2005, 2004); SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (2002); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1998). Group exhibitions include Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2020); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2016); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington (2014); New Museum, New York (2013); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2012); Guggenheim Museum, New York (2007). She has also exhibited at documenta 14, Kassel (2017), as well as the Biennales held in Venice (1993), Johannesburg (1995), and Istanbul (1997). Antoni is the recipient of several prestigious awards including Anonymous Was A Woman Grant (2014); Creative Capital Artist Grant (2012) and The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2011). Her work is included in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Washington; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Guggenheim Museum, New York; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington; Sammlung Goetz, Munich and Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo.
Kimsooja
Kimsooja was born in 1957 in Taegu, South Korea. She lives and works in NYC, USA; Paris, France and Seoul, South Korea. Kimsooja’s work explores themes such as interpersonal relationships, migration and textile folk crafts. Her multi-media practice involves performance, film, sculpture and site-specific installations. A recurring theme in Kimsooja’s performance works is the question of non-doing as an act of resistance. She frequently uses elements of Korean culture that carry traces of life, memories and history. During the early 1990s Kimsooja began using so called bottaris in her work. The bottari is a fabric bundle, historically used in Korea as a simple way of carrying personal belongings in times of sudden relocation. Kimsooja represented Korea at the 55th Venice Biennale, with a site specific installation at the Korean Pavillion: To Breathe: Bottari (2013). Earlier solo exhibitions include Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada (2014); Miami Art Museum, Miami (2012); Baltic Center for Contemporary Art, UK (2010) and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. (2008). In 2006 she had a solo exhibition at Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, her works were later included in the group exhibitions A Quiet Spring Wanders Through the Apartment (2021); Investigations of a Dog (2011) and Thrice Upon a Time (2010) at Magasin III.
