Erik Martinson → This Story Begins & Ends With Us

This Story Begins & Ends With Us

15 March 2017

Basma Alsharif (solo-exhibition)

co-curated with cheyanne turions

presented at A Space Gallery, 01.06 – 14.07.2012

co-presented by Pleasure Dome, the Images Festival,
Trinity Square Video, and
No Reading After the Internet

With a skilful play between moving images, text, translation and voice, the media work of Basma Alsharif calls out the viewer’s position of watching, asking us to reconsider the certainty with which we know the world. Alsharif’s practice evinces an interest in how people relate to and internalize geopolitical shifts that occur within their lifetimes, and those they carry with them from past generations. Weaving structural visual codes with material archives, her aim is to decentralize content and produce work that operates through a multi-vantage perspective, thereby transforming information into a visceral experience.

This Story Begins and Ends With Us includes: The Story of Milk & Honey (2011), Turkish Delight (2010), We Began By Measuring Distance (2009), and Everywhere was the Same (2007). Alongside this showcase of Alsharif’s work is Peer Pressure, a curatorial initiative by the artist, featuring a contextualization of her practice through the influence of her peers. What links these works together is the kind of questioning the artists perform in regards to their environments (physical, virtual and/or formal), and the way the artists push the boundaries of the mediums and genres in which they work, thereby creating a kind of positive peer pressure.

The artist talk at A Space Gallery, in collaboration with No Reading After the Internet, featured selections from Helter Skelter (1974), the true crime classic, which were offered up as a way to examine an author’s or artist’s relationship to historical detail and corresponding ideas of accuracy.

Alsharif lead a workshop at Trinity Square Video entitled The Re-Enactments. The workshop was for artists interested in exploring issues outside of their practice or current projects. Participants explored the functional uses of re-enactments within various societies.

Special thanks to the Canada Council for their support of this programming through their Visiting Foreign Artist program and to Circuit Gallery for their generous support in creating the artist’s prints.

*Exhibition essay available here.