Shamiran Istifan
‘In the green escape of my palace’, the first exhibition in our new permanent gallery space, recognises the paradise garden’s eternal pull and inevitable impossibility; the perfect insta post; that absurdly turquoise sea in the perfume advert. Understanding the garden in its physical, virtual and metaphorical manifestations, the exhibiting artists are united in their use of discourse surrounding technology, globalisation, womanhood and future histories as tools for heterotopian world building.
Situated within the widening crevice of tension between tradition and hyper-modernisation, fragmented memories and digitised futures, 'In the green escape of my palace' invites us to question our position within this proposed heterotopia, our techno-obsessiveness, and its consequent danger in the desire for sublimity.‘In the green escape of my palace’, the first exhibition in our new permanent gallery space, recognises the paradise garden’s eternal pull and inevitable impossibility; the perfect insta post; that absurdly turquoise sea in the perfume advert. Understanding the garden in its physical, virtual and metaphorical manifestations, the exhibiting artists are united in their use of discourse surrounding technology, globalisation, womanhood and future histories as tools for heterotopian world building.
‘In the green escape of my palace’, the first exhibition in our new permanent gallery space, recognises the paradise garden’s eternal pull and inevitable impossibility; the perfect insta post; that absurdly turquoise sea in the perfume advert. Understanding the garden in its physical, virtual and metaphorical manifestations, the exhibiting artists are united in their use of discourse surrounding technology, globalisation, womanhood and future histories as tools for heterotopian world building.
Situated within the widening crevice of tension between tradition and hyper-modernisation, fragmented memories and digitised futures, 'In the green escape of my palace' invites us to question our position within this proposed heterotopia, our techno-obsessiveness, and its consequent danger in the desire for sublimity.‘In the green escape of my palace’, the first exhibition in our new permanent gallery space, recognises the paradise garden’s eternal pull and inevitable impossibility; the perfect insta post; that absurdly turquoise sea in the perfume advert. Understanding the garden in its physical, virtual and metaphorical manifestations, the exhibiting artists are united in their use of discourse surrounding technology, globalisation, womanhood and future histories as tools for heterotopian world building.
Alia Hamaoui
Alia Hamaoui’s works created for ‘in the green escape of my palace’ act as a sensorial voyage towards a fictional heterotopic panoptic garden world. ⠀
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The garden is heavily influenced by the myriad mediations on the Islamic gardens through the years, from the original Chandigarh formations, to how it has been translated into textiles and video games. ⠀
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Combined with research into Byung-Chul Han’s writings on Pyscho-politics, Hamaoui has created a space which acts as both a visual metaphor and a meditation on this contemporary condition.
Zein Majali
Alia Hamaoui’s ‘Sweet will Dissolve to Heat’ and the sound piece ‘Steered towards the panoptic garden’, composed by Dorian Tran, are based upon an oral ruttier.
The piece combines the words of poet Omar Hamaoui, in which he imagines himself journeying to this fictional panoptic garden, sung in the style of the Lebanese folk song/poetry style of Zajal, with field recordings from the immediate Deptford environment.
The piece therefore leads the viewer through and from Deptford, into the panoptic garden.
Zein Majali’s installation centres around the consequences of being terminally online. Inspired by the work of Dutch furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld, the chair forces you to look; to digest content. ⠀
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Set within the context of the collapse of war, sex and selfies, ‘i love it when the images : the images wash over me’ seeks god in the network, straddling the line between divinity and depravity. The garden appears here as the network itself, a place in which we are continuously searching for an unreachable perfection.⠀