exhibitions
Sanae Arraqas & Manuela Picallo Gil
20/08 – 12/09/2020
curated by Christine Bruckbauer
Opening: Thursday 20/08/2020, 7 pm
Residency Sanae Arraqas: cancelled due to Covid-19
Online Artists Talk: Friday, 11/09/2020, 6 pm, on ZOOM moderated by Janine Maria Schneider
Venue: philomena+ project room, Heinestraße 40, 1020 Vienna
Keeping your distance, we have learned in the last few months, can save lives. However, with the warning phrase “Mind the Gap” the artists intend to highlight the danger that arises when the discrepancy between each other becomes too big, when the gap between North and South, between old and young, educationally advantaged and educationally deprived groups opens up too much.
According to Manuela Picallo Gil social gaps for example arise from biased news reporting. Tabloid papers, often distributed free of charge at public transport stops, play a major role in shaping public opinion and greatly influence the intellectual life and actions of our time. For some time now, she has chosen this free print medium in question as the starting material for her artistic practice. Corner shops (Trafik) that sell newspapers, lottery tickets and tobacco products in Austria were allowed to keep open alongside pharmacies and grocery stores in the state of emergency. With her in situ installation, the Viennese artist questions the concept of basic human needs.
Sanae Arraqas’ painterly paper works show the alienation of the individual in the context of the growing pace of everyday life. Technical acceleration in the area of (mass) mobility but also in the digital sector causes spatial and social distance between people. Her involuntary confinement due to Corona in Côte d’Ivoire resulted in the personal experience of another crucial aspect of the subject: the question of the right of self-determination, which is above all prevented by entrenched white-suprematist, market-economy dependency relationships and hinders the emancipation of former colonial countries.