Past
Oreet Ashery: Party for Freedom
6 Sep – 26 Oct 2013
The Space for Freedom is Getting Smaller and Less Transparent, 2013. Photo: Anders Sune Berg
In her first solo exhibition in Denmark, Oreet Ashery explores the potentials and dilemmas of liberation in a culture at odds with itself. The exhibition Party for Freedom takes its title from the Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilder’s neo-liberal freedom party Partij voor de Vrijheid, known for its anti-immigration views.
A three-screen video projection forms a tableau of ten audio-visual sequences with a specially commissioned soundtrack ranging from contemporary classical music, to Jazz-fusion and punk. Creating a sensory universe, imbedded in trash aesthetics, that combines a film-essay with performative scenarios, the work explores freedom as a deeply conflicted and contradictory entity. Ashery responds to the freedom rhetoric of the far-right by turning its deeply seated and unconscious sentiments inside out. Ambiguity lurks in the wings of Ashery’s universe; the historical baggage of the left-wing and ethos of the avant-garde are also reflected upon via whitish nakedness, unresolved revolutions and indigenous appropriations of spirituality.
The Space for Freedom is Getting Smaller and Less Transparent, 2013. Photo: Anders Sune Berg
The Space for Freedom is Getting Smaller and Less Transparent, 2013. Photo: Anders Sune Berg
Party for Freedom, 2013. Photo: Anders Sune Berg
I Can’t Bring You Back, 2013. Photo: Anders Sune Berg
I Can’t Bring You Back (detail), 2013. Photo: Anders Sune Berg