June 22–September 18, 2016
Opening: June 22, 5–8pm
Walter Phillips Gallery
The Banff Centre
107 Tunnel Mountain Drive
Banff, AB T1L
Canada
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday 12:30–5pm
banffcentre.ca
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On Cohabitation brings together a series of films by Israeli artist Yael Bartana (1970, Kfar-Yehezkel, lives and works in Berlin and Amsterdam) and guest curated by Ana Paula Cohen. Inferno (2013) and True Finn (2014) are presented in parallel to Bartana’s recent work, Pardes (2015). The selection interlaces many of the dominant topics present in her work, such as the politics of re-enactment and performance of identity, often in relation to shifting notions of statehood. The works draw on differing genres of contemporary filmmaking—from the conventions of fiction and documentary to reality television.
Bartana distills the visible and invisible layers of an increasingly connected world and creates films where we can inhabit an uncanny present. The collapse of histories, time, identities and places—all displaced and relocated in each film’s context—point toward new constructions of the collective imaginary, performed through the making of the films themselves. Before the “third Temple of Salomon” was built in São Paulo by Pentecostal religious leader Edir Macedo in 2014, Bartana’s film Inferno both performed its inauguration and foresaw its destruction. In True Finn a group of eight Finnish residents, each born in different parts of the world, were invited to gather in the countryside in Finland to explore the question: “Who is a true Finn?” And, Pardes sees the journey of an Israeli man traveling into the Amazon forest in search of a spiritual experience with a local shaman, taking Ayahuasca—a combination of plants, used as part of different Indigenous rituals in the Amazon.
On Cohabitation also draws together multiple sites—São Paulo, Jerusalem, the Amazon forest and Finland—to Banff, Canada, a place with its own histories, landscapes and divergent narratives, to resonate on the specificities of its present and past. Through costume, music, architecture, and the use of differing cinematic genres, Bartana creates a powerful reflection on the forced reality of coexistence that is both performed and deconstructed throughout her work.
Walter Phillips Gallery is free and open to all. Group tours of exhibitions may be arranged. Please call Walter Phillips Gallery at T 1 403 762 6281 for additional information or to arrange an appointment.
On Cohabitation: Films by Yael Bartana is generously supported by the Sir Jack Lyons Charitable Trust.
About The Banff Centre
The Banff Centre’s mission is inspiring creativity. Thousands of artists, leaders and researchers from across Canada and around the world participate in programs here every year. Through its multi-disciplinary programming, The Banff Centre provides artists with the support to create and develop solutions.
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