Group show
Artists: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Souad Abdelrassoul, Sonia Balassanian, Huguette Caland, Saloua Raouda Choucair, Sarah, Cunningham, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Simone Fattal, Hugh Hayden, Celia Hempton, Paul Heyer, Susan, Hiller, Lubaina Himid, Leiko Ikemura, Anuar Khalifi, John Latham, Haroon Mirza, Otobong Nkanga, Luísa Correia, Pereira, Laure Prouvost, Michael Rakowitz, Chelenge van Rampelberg, Hrair Sarkissian, Sean Scully, Gor Soudan, Magda, Stawarska, Liliane Tomasko, Miko Veldkamp, Barbara Walker
Curated by Dr. Omar Kholeif
“The show is my love-letter to London, a city that I have continually returned to over the last four decades. It is a journey of retreat and surrender that will be familiar to millions in search of a sense of longing and belonging — of home, of sacred space. Finding My Blue Sky invites spectators to indulge in the sensuous curve of artistic endeavors that exist in their own culturally situated space of dreaming—one that allows us to sketch myriad possible routes to modernity, and with this, new ways of looking altogether.” – Omar Kholeif, PhD, curator of Finding My Blue Sky
Finding My Blue Sky is an exhibition conceived as a constellation, at once epic and polyglot, personal and searchingly political. Curated by Dr. Omar Kholeif, this ambitious group show at Lisson Gallery features over twenty artists from diverse nationalities and eras, including several making their London debut, alongside twelve new commissions. The show elides biographical and cultural difference in overlapping personal narratives: it is at one level a self-reflexive statement, akin to a diary or memoir, evolving out of Kholeif’s formative interactions and new encounters with artists, and his own diasporic heritage (as the son of Egyptian and Sudanese parents). At another, it invites viewers to participate in the creation of meaning – to dream of their own aesthetic politics. Accordingly, the parallel title in Arabic has a distinct inflection: “What is the World that you Dream of?”
Spanning both London spaces, as well as its courtyards, windows, and adjacent street corners, Finding My Blue Sky builds into a chorus of voices and histories. Its starting point was a series of conversations between Kholeif and Lubaina Himid (b. 1954), in which Himid recounted her childhood in 1960s England: daily journeys to school by bus, and the experience of accompanying her mother, a textile designer, to colonial ‘independence’ ceremonies at the embassies of African nations. On the walls outside 27 Bell Street is a set of murals by Himid – emblematic enlargements of her Freedom Kanga paintings, inspired by East African kanga garments. In one mural, the phrase “There could be an endless ocean” appears beneath a pair of crimson lungs. The text, also a textile of a kind, has an aptly double resonance, channeling the show’s intimation of infinitude – its appeal to visitors’ boundless imaginations – while voicing a darker hypothesis concerning the climate emergency.
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Finding My Blue Sky invites each viewer to contemplate or cross the boundary between thought and feeling, combining a critical response with the urgings of memory and history. For Kholeif, the cumulative effect could be: “An exhibition as pure expression of feeling. I have done this the only way that I know how – by invoking the voices of the artists that I have journeyed with, or vicariously through, over the years.”
Opening Times:
Tuesday – Saturday: 11:00am – 6:00pm
Sources: Lisson Gallery, Press release
Lisson Gallery
67 Lisson Street
London, NW1 5DA
United Kingdom
tel. +44 (0)20 7724 2739
contact@lissongallery.com
https://www.lissongallery.com/