NOOR ABUARAFEH, SHADI ALZAQZOUQ AND MALENE NORS TARDRUP
INTERMOLECULAR SPACES is a collaboration between the Palestinian curator Alia Rayaan from the Al Hoash gallery in Jerusalem and artistic director, Henrik Broch-Lips, at Kunsthal NORD in Aalborg
The project is initiated in connection with CKU’s Images 2016 and will explore questions concerning transit, home and spaces within themes like globalization, capitalism, community and boundaries, which has become an extremely current topic in Europe, and no longer just a phenomenon concerning people from countries in conflict.
INTERMOLECULAR SPACES therefore is an artistic attempt to challenge and tackle the most important and current questions through creative and critical thinking with razor-sharp curatorial and artistic approaches. There is a need for new formats of interaction, mutual relationships and confrontation between citizens and foreigners, inhabitants and refugees, between centres and peripheries, middle class and working class, and between “us” and “them”.
The Urban Project
In a house on Ravnkildevej in the middle of Eastern Aalborg, the Dane, Malene Nors Tardrup, will enter into a close artistic collaboration with the Palestinian artist, Noor Abuarafeh, to create a site specific, relational and resident involving project.
Over several periods of time, in the spring of 2016, the two artists will use the house as the place of production, research-site and prelude to the following exhibition in Kunsthal NORD. With the interventional art and the relational aesthetics potential, Nors and Noor will engage the residents in a project of artistic collaboration, which will be created and developed on-site.
Specifically, the artists will create sculptures with the residents and extend invitations to potluck suppers, barbeque evenings and social gatherings to construct dialogues concerning concepts such as spaces, home, refuge, as well as themes such as distance, destination and relation.
On the abstract level, Nors and Noor are inspired by the physics concept of intermolecular powers, which refers to the influence two or more molecules have on each other, which can both be repelling and attracting.
The final result will contextually be included in the exhibition INTERMOLECULAR SPACES, which also will consist of a range of works by Shadi Alzaqzouq from Palestine.
ABOUT IMAGES 16: Over a 100 artist represent contemporary art from Africa, Asia and the middle east throughout Images 16 with a focus on global challenges and the relationship between artists and society in 16 different danish cities. Images 16 has created a collaboration between 21 danish cultural institutions, Holbæk municipality, 16 international curators and Danish Strategy for Culture and Development (CKU). Read more about Images 16 at www.cku.dk and follow the project on facebook.
See or download the exhibition catalogue here.
The exhibition is supported by: