Installation shot of Anas Albraehe: The Dreamer (2022) at 474 Greenwich Street in NYC
Since we were born, we have never celebrated, we only survived, hoped and dreamed.
Stop the injustice until we wake up
Even though we are asleep, but we’re not well
We are the people of the world
– Anas Albraehe
When: through August 27
Where: Anita Rogers Gallery (494 Greenwich Street, Tribeca, Manhattan)
Syrian painter Anas Albraehe places marginalized men in compromising positions. The laborers and refugees in his expressionist paintings appear asleep in random public spaces, speaking to the layers of fatigue and exposure that stem from immigration. Bringing the styles of Matisse and Gauguin into landscapes from the artist’s current hometown of Beirut, The Dreamer visualizes the migrant experience of lying in wait for something unknown and unguaranteed.
By Billy Anania
“…Only in the mirror inside you can you see outside of yourself,” says British- Israeli artist Yishay Garbasz, holding up this mirror through her career-spanning investigations of trauma, womanhood, and identity. Many artists base their works on victims of “marginalized identity,” a subject that often produces powerful and evocative artwork. Women’s Art Doesn’t End at the Outer Labia is Garbasz’s photographic ode to“marginalized identity” in all its conceptual forms. Garbasz confronts taboos of trauma, memory, and identity—using herself and her past and the locations of historic tragedies as subjects—presenting them boldly with sincerity.
Much of Garbasz’s work focuses on reconceptualizing trauma. “Seeing who I am is only the beginning of my growth as an artist, as my identity has been forged by the trauma I inherited from my mother and her experiences in the Holocaust,” Garbasz says. The continuous narrative of her photography is the multigenerational impact of trauma; her pieces infused with memories of events that she or the viewer may not have experienced firsthand, but that continue to dwell in places and minds—her works a study of these moments’ longitude.
Included in this cross section of her works are pieces pulled from Bearing Witness, a series of projects in which Garbasz captured the aftermath of immense or historic tragedy. This includes Fukushima Prefectural Ono Hospital (2013), a still of an empty hospital taken two years after Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture was devastated by failure of three nuclear reactors. Her landscapes are devoid of life yet somehow buzz with the ghostly imprint of humanity. Garbasz wields memories into tangible subjects, requiring of her viewers a certain patience and care to fully understand the depth of her works.
Emotional disturbance comes first in the layered process of appreciating her works. Viewers can sense the melancholia, the strength of memories. Pieces like Footsteps (40) from In My Mother’s Footsteps (2004-2009) beckon the viewer alongside Garbasz as she traces her mother’s life during the Holocaust. By viewing places from her mother’s harrowing life, viewers are pulled deeper into an exploration of Garbasz evoking true humanity and sincerity. Even without a context of historic events, Garbasz’s works hold the power of memory and emotion. Eat Me Damien (2011) displays Garbasz’s own testicles, preserved in formaldehyde after her gender affirmation surgery. Garbasz invites viewers to experience the deeply personal images that contribute to her identity and memories, to work harder to fully understand her.
Garbasz continues conceptualizing what is “inside” both herself and others. In displaying this variety of photographs together, the message of each collection transforms into a more contemporary idea of identity. She affords the same care and personalization to a still landscape as she does some of her most vulnerable memories. The intertwining of the two suggests that lasting impacts of trauma and memory continue, even in conditions where life’s vibrancy has stopped.
Women’s Art Doesn’t End at the Outer Labia will be on display at Anita Rogers Gallery, 494 Greenwich Street Ground Floor, New York City, through June 18. Visit their website for more information.
By Nikkala Kovacevic
For the month of June, FAM’s Artist Spotlight Series will be celebrating Pride Month! Our featured artist of the week is Yishay Garbasz. Yishay is a Berlin based trans woman artist whose multidisciplinary work includes photography, film, and installation. She explores topics such as memory, trauma, marginalization, gender, intersectionality, and neo-fascism.
Yishay has worked with communities affected by war and has experienced disability, abuse, and trauma. She refers to trauma, disability, and other marginalizing attributes as invisible, because unless one is experiencing them, they tend not to see or acknowledge them. She centers the voices of the marginalized in order to make the invisible visible.
Yishay recently worked on a smaller, more personal project to help a friend during hard times. She painted the words “I am loved” in reverse on a shirt, so that when her friend looked in the mirror, she would be able to see herself and the message and know she was loved. Yishay’s work covers so many important topics, and I encourage you to learn more about her. Please also know that you are loved, and don’t forget to check back all month for more Pride Month Artist Spotlights!
By Christine Snyder
Pictured above: Yishay Garbasz, Footsteps (48) from In My Mother’s Footsteps, 2004-2009, C-print, 32 7/8″ x 54 3/4″
Yishay Garbasz is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist whose work, for over two decades, has explored the “cultural specific inheritance of traumatic memories.” We visited her most recent exhibition, Women’s Art Doesn’t End at The Outer Labia, at Anita Rogers Gallery in NYC upon its opening in May. The exhibition explores geographical sites left in the wake of war, terror, and significant moments in her life during some of the darkest parts of history. Images of Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture, the site of the second most catastrophic nuclear disaster in history (second only to Chernobyl), and moments from her mother’s lived experience during the holocaust both appear across the gallery walls.
Meeting Garbasz for the first time leaves you with a certainty that her work is derived from somewhere profound and brave. In 2010, her exhibition Becoming appeared at The Busan Biennale in Busan, South Korea. Described as a straightforward look at gender affirmation and the gaze on transgender identity in our society; from language to body image and making early fashion choices.
Women’s Art Doesn’t End at The Outer Labia portrays the real intimacy of the human body and the physical space it takes up. The combination is her work. A lesson in symbiosis. Eat Me Damien, a piece on display at the very front of the gallery, displays Garbasz’s testicles, removed during a gender affirmation surgery and preserved in formaldehyde. An opposite wall holds a larger than life barbed-vagina, which Garbasz spent long hours installing in the gallery just days prior to the opening.
The exhibit creates heavy moments for the viewer, challenging you to place yourself in these dark moments. Breathing them in as you dare to see further into what they represent. Provoking strong emotional reactions whether they’re intended by the artist or not. Her work challenges us to see humanity for what it is. Even when we have our own ideas of what people, places, and events represent throughout time. Women’s Art Doesn’t End at The Outer Labia feels deeply personal. Emitting the pain and raw energy that can be marginally felt within her photography and installations.
Women’s Art Doesn’t End at The Outer Labia is on display at Anita Rogers Gallery at 494 Greenwich Street until June 18, 2022.
By Attia Taylor
Pictured above: Yishay Garbasz, Untitled Vagina, 2022, Barbed wire and Razor Wire, 113″ x 69″ x 15″
A revelatory new take on art in Britain after the Second World War, a period when artists had to make sense of an entirely altered world.
Postwar Modern explores the art produced in Britain in the wake of a cataclysmic war. Certainty was gone, and the aftershocks continued, but there was also hope for a better tomorrow. These conditions gave rise to an incredible richness of imagery, forms and materials in the years that followed.
Focusing on ‘the new’, Postwar Modern features 48 artists and around 200 works of painting, sculpture, photography, collage and installation. It explores the subjects that most preoccupied artists, among them the body, the post-atomic condition, the Blitzed streetscape, private relationships and imagined future horizons. As well as reconsidering well-known figures, the exhibition foregrounds artists who came to Britain as refugees from Nazism or as migrants from a crumbling empire, in addition to female artists who have tended to be overlooked.
Morning in Mykonos, 1960-61 is one of five works by William Scott which can be seen at the exhibition.
By Postwar Modern New Art in Britain 1945-1965
Pictured above: Morning in Mykonos, 1960-61 © Copyright William Scott Estate. Courtesy of William Scott Foundation.
View more on Barbican.org.uk
View on AnitaRogersGallery.com
Yishay Garbasz’s images explore themes of gender, trauma, and memory. Through depictions of sites of trauma and violence, and explorations of gender and identity, Garbasz shines light on people, places, and memories that are often overlooked, presenting them with clarity, compassion, and pride.
View more on Artnet.com
View more on AnitaRogersGallery.com
Art, whatever it takes – RomeArtProgram has made interviews with people involved in art, living in Italy, the USA and the UK, to know their feelings during the emergency.
– George Negroponte interview:
RomeArtProgram: What is your definition of “Art” today?
-George: I like thinking about “culture,” and more specifically, as it relates to painting: I am dedicated to the meaning of painting as a visual language: absorbed and learned over time. I write about painting a lot, and I admire Fairfield Porter as a critic and painter. He wrote intimately about it. Beautifully. Porter saw painting as a manifestation of desires, urges, and needs arising from the deepest realms of the psyche. Equally important was his belief that painting has its own terms. It is not programmed, nor can it be imposed upon.
.
RAP: Art is dynamic and regenerates itself… how does it change, and how did it change us?
-George: Not sure. Your question suggests an endless supply of it (art). I don’t see it as a given; it’s earned or warranted only when our highest aspirations mysteriously come together without reason. I see it as disruptive, even chaotic. The art world I know is wildly competitive and aggressive. Noisy. But the fundamental nature of art is uncompromising. It does not tolerate manipulation.
.
RAP: When (and how) did you understand that art was becoming very important in your life?
-George: When I was five or six, my father started to paint as a hobby. He was a weekend painter, wore a blue beret, and copied Cezanne. Eventually, it made him miserable because he didn’t think he was improving.
It was too bad because he poured his heart into painting.
.
RAP: What role does art play today? What are the “great figures” who have recently changed it? Do you feel close to any of these figures?
-George: I’m still grappling with what Cezanne did to painting.
Pollock gave painting gravity in every sense of the word.
Brice Marden is a painter I have always admired.
Pictured above: George Negroponte. My Rothko. 2018. Mixed Media on Canvas. 8″ x 8″
Read the full interview on RomeArtProgram.org
View on AnitaRogersGallery.com
As a tribute to the passing of Chris Finch, my films “Richard Hamilton” and “RB Kitaj”, which we worked on together, are available for viewing on Vimeo.
Click Here to Stream the Films
I first met Chris Finch in the sixties in London. I had just made the first in a series of films on contemporary artists, a film on David Hockney, and had been commissioned to make another for the Arts Council. This was to be a film on RB Kitaj and I approached Chris to appear in the film and talk to Kitaj. A year later, I began another project on Richard Hamilton, known as the father of ‘pop art’. Again, I approached Chris and he agreed to participate, even though Hamilton’s first words were: “I don’t like films about artists.” So we began by taking a Nagra recorder and sat down with Richard Hamilton to make a series of interviews that became an integral part of the film.
Chris became a friend, but sadly I lost touch with him when he left England for a teaching job in America. Many years later, after I myself had come to live in Los Angeles, we re-united. His passing is a blow to the art world as well as family and friends. His brand of eclecticism was unique. His humour and talent in so many fields unrivaled. I am streaming the two films, RB Kitaj (1967) and Richard Hamilton (1969) for a week as a tribute to Chris.
– James Scott
Pictured above: James Scott, Still from the film Richard Hamilton (1969)
Work by Virva Hinnemo and George Negroponte is currently being shown alongside John Battle at Keyes Art in Sag Harbor. The exhibit, Eyewitness, is on view to the public October 9 – November 28, 2021.
Eyewitness is an exhibit meant to confirm that Modernism is alive and well: art-making immersed in a visual and pictorial language, aspiring to convey meaning with ancient tools. Embedded in these works is a struggle to clarify purpose and the urge to ignore the cheeky posturing of the zeitgeist of the 1960s.
~George Negroponte October 2021
Eyewitness
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 9th, 6-8pm
Open from October 9th – November 28, 2021
Keyes Art Gallery
45 Main Street
At the American Hotel
Sag Harbor, NY
Pictured above: Virva Hinnemo, View from a Tent, 2021, oil on linen.
View more on JulieKeyesArt.com
View on AnitaRogersGallery.com