Event

Join artists Jananne Al-Ani and Michael Rakowitz in discussion with the writer and arts organiser Rijin Sahakian in a conversation exploring the transnational threads linking their work and past and present Iraqi art and culture.  

Jananne and Michael have both recently had work acquired for the Towner Collection: Timelines and April is the cruellest month. Rijin guest curated the exhibition Shangri La: Imagined Cities, which included Jananne’s work, and founded Sada, an arts education project for Baghdad-based art students, which she directed until its closure in 2015. Rijin is currently working with former Sada artists on a project commissioned by documenta, for which Michael is an artist mentor. 

Timelines is co-commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and Towner with Art Fund support through the Moving Image Fund for Museums. Timelines is currently on display at Towner until 22 May 2022.

April is the cruellest month was an England’s Creative Coast Waterfronts commission by Turner Contemporary.

Access

BSL interpretation and automated live captioning using Otter.ai will be available for this event.

Please email programme@townereastbourne.org.uk by 5pm GMT on Monday 25 April if you would like to use the BSL interpretation, or for any other access requirements.

About the speakers

Jananne Al-Ani is an artist, researcher and lecturer working with photography, film and video. Her practice is concerned with the power of testimony, representations of landscapes marked by conflict, and the legacy of British power and influence globally. She has exhibited widely with solo shows at the Hayward Gallery Project Space, London; Beirut Art Center, Beirut; National Museum of Asian Art, Washington DC; Darat al Funun, Amman; and Art Now: Tate Britain, London.

Michael Rakowitz is an Iraqi-American artist working at the intersection of problem-solving and troublemaking. His work has appeared in venues worldwide including dOCUMENTA (13), P.S.1, MoMA, MassMOCA, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Palais de Tokyo and the 10th and 14th Istanbul Biennials. He has had solo projects and exhibitions with organisations including Creative Time, Tate Modern in London, The Wellin Museum of Art, MCA Chicago and Waterfronts - England’s Creative Coast.

Rijin Sahakian's work centres Iraq as the site where global power has been deployed, visualized, accelerated for the 21st century, reconfiguring resistance, technology and visual culture. She founded Sada, an arts education project for Baghdad-based art students, which she directed until its closure in 2015. She has lectured and developed programs in the US and abroad and contributed writing to a range of publications including Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, Hyperallergic, Warscapes, e-flux journal and n+1.