Enqelab Street
# UrbanHegemony Project
Opening: 13 November, 6 pm
Exhibition Tour with Curator: 20 November, 6 pm
Panel Discussion: Dr. Kathrin Wildner, 26 November, 6 pm
Book Release: 26 February 2016 (Further information would be released through website of SCC & ZKU)
Opening Times:
Tuesday-Friday: 4pm-8pm
Saturday-Sunday: 1pm-7pm
Monday: Closed
Admission: Free
This exhibition was initiated as part of #Urban Hegemony project run by Studio of Contemporary Creation
Curator: Alireza Labeshka
Assistant Curators: Parisa Hakiminia, Amin Fakhari
Exhibition Design: Parisa Hakiminia, Mohammadreza Movvahedi
Graphic Design: Shahin Rassouli
Participanting Artists:
Majid Alimoradpour
Iman Arki
Negar Farajiani
Amir Farsijani
Milad Hooshmandzadeh
Omid Mehdizadeh
Masih Mostajeran
Seyed Ali Sharifi
Mohsen Yazdipour
Saba Zavarei
About the show:
“Enqelab Street” is the first exhibition in a series of Urban Hegemony project initiated by the Studio for Contemporary Creation. The Urban Hegemony project is about the rapid urban changes in Iranian cities and the socio-political implications of these transformations. It addresses the formation processes of urban spaces that possess potential for creating new ideologies and lifestyles for citizens. Urban Hegemony discusses how a city can define and subtly re-configure the narrow borders between citizenship and non-citizenship, between order and chaos, and also between the legal and the illegal.
“Urban Hegemony” begins in Tehran on one of the most important streets in the Middle East, “Enqelab”, which literary means “Revolution”. If we have Tahrir Square for Cario, and Taqsim Square for Istanbul, then for Tehran we would refer to Enqelab Square (Street). For Tehran, Enqelab represents - as Asef Bayat in his book “Life as Politics” asserts - the “street politics of exceptional junctures, the street of discontent”, but after 2009 the municipality of Tehran configured Enqelab street space in such a way as to minimize the social interaction of citizens. The “Enqelab Street” exhibition reflects the reactions of contemporary Iranian artists Majid Alimoradpour, Iman Arki, Negar Farajiani, Amir Farsijani, Milad Hooshmandzadeh, Omid Mehdizadeh, Mehrdad Mirzaei, Masih Mostajeran, Seyed Ali Sharifi, Mohsen Yazdipour and Saba Zavarei to the recent urban changes in Enqelab Street.
ZKU (Center for Art and Urbanistics) is hosting the first exhibition and the project was made possible through the kind support of Sharestan Architecture Magazine, Kunsthochschule Weissensee Berlin and IFA.
Dr. Kathrin Wildner is an urban anthropologist. She has done ethnographic fieldwork in New York City, Mexico City, Istanbul, Bogotá and new urban periferies. As an urban researcher, she teaches, publishes and participates in transdisciplinary projects and international exhibitions. She is a founding member of metroZones – Center for Urban Affairs (www.metrozones.info) and was the coordinator of arts and sciences within the interdisciplinary research and art project The Global Prayers Congress: Faith in the City (2010-2014) (www.globalprayers.info). Between 2013-2015 she was visiting professor at the Masters Program „Spatial Strategies “ (Raumstrategien) at the Art Academy Weißensee, Berlin. Since 2012, she has held the position of professor of Cultural Theory and Practice at HafenCity University, Hamburg. Some of her recent publications include:
Global Prayers. Contemporary Manifestations of the Religious in the City, Zürich 2014 (mit J. Becker, K. Klingan, S. Lanz), Stadtforschung aus Lateinamerika. Neue urbane Szenarien: Öffentlichkeit – Territorialität – Imaginarios, Bielfeld 2013; (mit A. Huffschmid), Transnationalism and Urbanism, New York 2012 (mit S. Krätke und S. Lanz; Urban Prayers, Berlin 2011 (mit metroZones), Public Istanbul – Spheres and Spaces of the Urban, Bielefeld 2008 (mit F. Eckhardt).
www.kwildner.net
Alireza Labeshka is a curator based in Tehran/Berlin whose main concerns are the public domain, the city’s urban transformation, and their relation to political and social issues. In addition to being an M.A student of Literary Studies at Humboldt University, Berlin, he is currently working on a project called “Urban Hegemony". Alireza is the director of an independent art space called Raf Projects which he established in 2012 in Tehran. His curating experiences compromise several projects with galleries and museums, including ZKU Berlin, WBA Wroclaw and Raster from Poland, and also M.I.A Gallery in Seattle, USA. Besides curating more than ten exhibitions for Iranian galleries like Raf, Sareban, S-CC and The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, he has written various articles, interviews, exhibition catalogs and art reviews for several art magazines, among them Golestaneh, Tandis and Mokkab, as well as a recently founded Persian online Journal called KAAF. Alireza has also had the opportunity of residencies in the Center for Contemporary Art, CCA Warsaw, and Aedes Berlin in collaboration with IFA. He is the co-designer of a residency program for the KAAF Foundation in Tehran, and has invited and worked with esteemed artists like Aneta Grzeszykowska, Olaf Brzeski, and Daniel Kötter.
SCC, Studio of contemporary creation is a space for experimenting and research about Contemporary Art and different approaches of today’s artistic creation.This center aims to support creative ideas, and to prepare favorable circumstances for contemporary artists to explore new fields and to expand the boundaries of today’s artistic creations. International Residency program, Theory-Practice Research Programs, Artist-talk events and International events and shows are the core activities of this center. Studio of Contemporary Creation is Located at Isfahan, Iran.
This exhibition was initiated as part of #Urban Hegemony project run by Studio For Contemporary Creation
Please check the website of the exhibition for updates.