Urgent Conversations: Athens – Antwerp

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    The exhibitions Urgent Conversations: Athens–Antwerp and Urgent Conversations: Antwerp – Athens are a collaboration between EMST and M HKA, a theoretical and visual dialogue, based on works from the collections of both museums, which includes more than 70 works structured in 22 topics.   

    28.04.2017 - 07.01.2018        

    M HKA, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen - Leuvenstraat 32, 2000 Antwerpen

    EMST, National Museum of Contemporary Art - Kallirrois Avenue & Amvr. Frantzi Str., Athens 11743

    Charif Benhelima

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    Semites: The Album, 2011
    Charif Benhelima
    Artist Book
    ink on paper

    Published by MER. Paper Kunsthalle, 2011.

    The book Semites: The Album by Charif Benhelima is published in a signed edition and limited to 500 copies.  For this series, the artist uses a Polaroid camera to take photographs of already existing images.  In what he himself describes as an imitation documentary, the artist examines concepts such as identity and reality.  The direct impulse for this was Benhelima's discovery that his own name is in fact of Jewish origin.  By combining Jewish, Arabic and Sephardic portraits with portraits of himself, he creates a personal document and at the same time a confusing collage of contradictory identities.  In the reproductions, the reflection of the Polaroid's flash is clearly visible.  But instead of clarifying the subjects' facial traits, the light engenders a blurring of the faces' details.  "That connects with the vague memories that we have of our childhood years. The memories that I have of my own parents, too, are rather vague..." 

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