Where Have All the Jasmines Gone?

Naked Cities
with artists Tammam Azzam, Sherif El-Azma, Rabih Mroué

A project curated by Charlotte Bank and Salah Saouli

Exhibition dates: 
November 21 – December 15

Location: Art-Lab Berlin
Perleberger Straße 60
https://artlabberlin.wordpress.com/

Sherif El-Azma’s work “Oh Father of Youths – Al Qahira Out of Perspective” (2009) is shown in this exhibition after 10 years again in Berlin.

The work – Video and Maquette –  is a forensic piece of psychogeography produced in 2009 for the Berlin Taswir exhibition at Gropius Bau which was curated by House of Taswir. The video offers an in-depth insight into the psychopolitical conditions of young men in relation to their fathers in Cairo one year before the uprising at Tahrir square in 2010. The work meanders between the psychiatry ward, the cemetery, construction sites ruins, the Old City, and the artist’s neighbourhood, in loops, slow motion, and a maquette whose psycho-poietic quality is hidden by simplicity.

In generous collaboration with Charlotte Bank and Salah Saouli at Art Lab Berlin, we are proud to showing this work of Sherif El-Azma – Oh Father of Youths – again in Berlin.  We think it is one of the most important conceptual works of Contemporary Video Art produced in Cairo. The work deserves a museal future.  Interested parties please PM Shulamit Bruckstein personally.

Tammam Azzam

Tammam Azzam was born in Damascus, and currently lives in Berlin. He studied painting at the University of Damascus and maintained a succesful career as a painter in Syria before the Syrian uprising. In 2011, Tammam Azzam left Damascus for Dubai where he spent the next four years, before relocating to Germany. He works in a variety of media, such as painting, collage, and digital images. 

Sherif El-Azma

Sherif El Azma lives and works in Cairo. He studied at the Surrey Institute in London and teaches experimental film at the American University in Cairo. Sherif El Azma works across different media, such as video, installation, performance lectures, and sound. Ranging from the highly experimental to documentary to riffs on the cinematic, he often explores trajectories of psychogeography. Sherif El Azma’s films have been screened at numerous international venues, and featured in Manifesta, Home Works Forum, and the Sharjah and Venice Bienniales.   

Rabih Mroué

Rabih Mroué was born in Beirut and currently lives in Berlin. He is a theatre director, actor, visual artist and playwright. Rabih Mroué was awarded the Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research 2020. He is a contributing editor for The Drama Review / TDR (New York) and the quarterly Kalamon (Beirut). He is also a co-founder and was a board memeber of the Beirut Art Center (BAC). Rabih Mroué was a fellow at The International Research Center: Interweaving Performance Cultures at the Freie Universität Berlin in 2013-2014, and has been a theatre director at Münchner Kammerspiele since 2015. 

Art Lab

in Collaboration with

Galerie Kornfeld and Taswir projects

Supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds